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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 21 Jun 1944

Vol. 94 No. 6

Transport (No. 2) Bill, 1944—Second Stage (Resumed).

Before the adjournment, I had been dealing with what seemed to me the basic problem in the Bill, namely, the question of ownership and control. Bearing in mind that, if there is to be any reasonable prospect of efficiency in public transport here, it is dependent upon a monopoly both of railway and road services, and that from that point of view, both as an ethical and a moral principal as well as a good social practice, I urged the viewpoint that such monopoly should be under public ownership, should be under the continuous control, in so far as its principles are concerned, of the Legislature of the country, and that the benefits, if any, which would accrue to that monopoly should flow to the citizens of the country as a whole rather than to any group of private investors. In putting forward that viewpoint, I am not suggesting that public ownership or nationalisation should be accepted merely from the point of view of political principles but purely from the point of view that private enterprise in this particular field of activity has shown itself to be incapable of meeting the problems that have arisen; that in the field of transport, both rail and road, not only in this country but in many other countries, private enterprise and the unrestricted play of free competition have proved unsuitable to the continuance of the efficient operation of this public service. It is purely from the point of view of efficiency, and from the point of view that it is unsocial and, I think, immoral, to impose a monopoly on a vital service in the country and to allow that monopoly to be utilised to the benefit of a small, privileged group of citizens, that I have urged that a basis of public control through some form of nationalised transport, which seems to have met with a considerable degree of support in this House, should be considered.

The other important point to which I referred, and which perturbs me in relation to the Bill, is the whole financial structure. The Minister, at an earlier period, indicated that, so far as the Government was concerned, the whole basis on which they projected their system of reorganisation of transport as embodied in this Bill is, in the first instance, a matter of financial reorganisation. He subsequently went on to deal with other questions of traffic, managerial efficiency, and so on, but continually during the presentation of his case in support of the Bill he has emphasised the fact that the main hope in the future for the new transport company is the financial arrangements and the financial management that are to be given to it. But when we try to find out the actual extent in £ s. d. of the advantage that is to be given to the new company by virtue of this financial reorganisation and the new financial ability that is to be placed at the service of the company, so far the only single figure mentioned by the Minister is the sum of £110,000 per annum. Everything else is vague. He also indicates that there will be a certain relief given to the new company by way of release from taxation, but even that figure is not available. It is something general, something we must await in the future. The only definite figure we have is the figure of £110,000 per annum.

Against that small and insignificant figure we have on the other side, first of all, the proposals for the transfer of stock in the new company to the present holders of stocks and shares in the existing company, on a basis which seems to be open to criticism from every point of view. The Minister thinks that to take as a basis for such transfer the market value on any particular date, say on the basis indicated by the Labour Party in their proposals, over a period of ten years, or on a date immediately prior to the war, would be acting unfairly to the shareholders, especially the ordinary shareholders who, in 1933, had 90 per cent. of the nominal value of their shares slashed by legislative Act of this Assembly. The curious thing is that, while he has great concern for the shareholders to see that not the slightest act of injustice is done to them, in the Bill itself there is a complete lack of concern for the men who are the basis of the transport system, and they are not the shareholders.

So far as the shareholders as a body are concerned—leaving aside the individuals—over a period of the railway's operations they have been more than fully recouped what they originally invested, and, if there has been any dereliction on the part of the company in meeting its commitments in regard to dividends on ordinary shares, surely neither the Legislature nor the citizens of this country are to be held responsible.

They had not only control of the company, but they had, as the Minister has said, a monopoly up to a certain period in this country of the main artery of transport. Over the past 20 years this House, on different occasions, has had to give its attention to various measures brought before it to assist the railway company and, therefore, the proprietors of that company out of the difficulties that they allowed themselves to get into. The Minister said that they must not be treated unfairly, and that there should be no wholesale slashing of their interests in the present company. They are to be given a transfer of stock on a basis which quite clearly is hardly acceptable to anybody outside of those directly interested in this company, and those who are tied to support the Government in this House. Nobody can find a good word to say for the basis on which the Minister is proposing this transfer of stock. It is not that anybody wants to be inequitable in dealing with these men and women, but there have been many suggestions to take the value of the shares over a period or on a particular date. The latest suggestion on the matter was made in the House last night. It was that the matter would be left to a special commission or committee to make a decision which would be acceptable to all parties. The main point is not merely the question of how much intrinsic value is going to be given to those people by this transfer, but the more important one: what additional burden is to be placed on the new company because, for every £1,000,000 in capital that we allocate for the purchase of the interests of the present stockholders, the new company has got to provide, on the basis of the debenture stock, £30,000 in interest per year, and for any common stock, if the going is good, it may be at the rate of £30,000 or £60,000 per year up to a limit of 6 per cent. on the common stock.

It is not, therefore, a question of paying for something and of knowing that you are finished with it. Whatever is given to the present stockholders, as representing their interests in the new company, will be a burden that will have to be carried by the new company, by the staff of the new company and, possibly, in certain eventualities, by the taxpayers of the country as a whole. It is from that point of view that some of us, while we may disagree politically on what should be the form of ownership in the Bill, feel it should be possible to get agreement on this: that some means should be found equitably to decide what should be the basis of the allocation of stock in the new company to the present holders of stock in the existing company, something on which we could agree, and which would leave us a clear field to decide exactly whether or not we had overburdened this new company.

Even if all other measures embodied in the Bill were acceptable to everybody, we could at least decide that, having given the best system of organisation and the best system of control and ownership, we had at the same time not taken away any of those advantages from the new company by overburdening it in the financial sense.

The Minister last night, referring to certain figures, indicated that, in certain eventualities, the new company would require to more than double the net adjusted income over the years 1925 to 1938 if it were to meet its commitments under the heading of debenture interest, the redemption of debenture stock and the minimum payment of 1 per cent. on the common stock. At Question Time in the House to-day, he told us that he had been consulted by the company in relation to the addition of another £250,000 per year under this Bill to meet the proposed pension scheme for the employees. We have also got the fact, pointed out in the Report of the Railway Tribunal of 1939, that while the engineers had indicated to the Tribunal that the figure of, roughly, £1,200,000 per annum was required for the maintenance and renewal of ways and works and rolling stock, that in no year during the period from, say, 1931 to 1938 had that figure actually been made by the railway company. So that even if we allow for the fact that, with the new equipment, the reconditioning of road beds and rolling stock, as a result of the new capital put into the new company there might be a reduction in the actual amount required for maintenance and renewals over the period immediately following on the commencement of operations by the new company, we still have got to find, possibly, an additional sum, which has not yet been covered, and which must be added to the bill already presented against the new company before it starts operations at all.

From that angle the Minister was peculiarly vague. He said his only hope of the new company being a success consists in this: that it will attract back to the railways the traffic which it had lost. There is no indication at all on what basis that traffic is going to be attracted back by the new company. The Minister says there is going to be no interruption of private hauliers, private cars or of ordinary commercial vehicles. They will all be at liberty to carry private goods. But it is quite conceivable that there may be a new technical development in the case of private cars and private lorries after the war. No one can be positive about that. One thing, however, is clear, and that is that there will be a greater technical development in regard to the internal combustion engine installed in the private car or lorry than there will be in relation to the steam-engine on the railways. We all know that the whole tendency during the present war has been to utilise the internal combustion engine as against the steam-engine. In addition, we had the Minister for Local Government and Public Health in his speech last night indicating a complete system of new roads to cater specially for fast motor traffic: roads capable of carrying not only additional traffic in passengers and goods but carrying it at greater speed, with greater safety and with less inconvenience to those engaged in it.

Therefore, I say that if there are any advantages they will be on the side of those who will be either retaining traffic from the railways or taking it away from them. The railways can only meet that competition on certain lines: that is, if they are going to be able to offer lower charges for carrying freight and passengers. On that basis they must increase their traffic or carry the same amount of traffic as they had been carrying—leaving out the years of the emergency—at higher freight rates, or we will have a combination of both with a worsening of conditions so far as the men employed on the railways are concerned.

One thing which I regard as peculiar struck me when listening to the Minister's statement in support of the Bill, and it was this: that there is one vital factor that he has completely failed to refer to during the whole of the discussion. So far as the success of the Bill is concerned, he has indicated that it is largely dependent on what he regards as good financial management and the application of modern and efficient methods—I suppose reorganisation and rationalisation. It is clear and definite that the gentleman whom it is intended will be the new chairman is to be the main hope of the Minister in seeing that these particular improvements and benefits will accrue to the new company. Yet not once during the discussion has the Minister made a single reference to the fact that this same gentleman in March, 1943, indicated what he regarded as the two main disadvantages under which the present railway company operated. The first was that it had too big a staff and, secondly, that it was operating under onerous conditions imposed by the trade unions. I ask the Minister, does he agree with the future or intended chairman of the new company that there must be a reduction of staff on the railways if they are to be carried on in an efficient and capable manner and, secondly, must the conditions imposed by the trade unions on the railway company be eased to its benefit? One of these onerous conditions referred to by the present chairman of the Great Southern Railways Company in his speech was this: to insist that the railway company should pay overtime to railway workers when they had completed their normal eight-hour day. These are features that must occur to the mind of any ordinary person, and not so much the statements made by the Minister in this House as to what we are promised will flow from this Bill when it comes to be operated. The fact is that while the Minister may steer the Bill through the House and may be successful in having it passed into law, it is another individual, or group of individuals, entirely outside the range of this House and even outside the range of the Government, who will give effect to it when it becomes an Act, and who will have the duty of carrying out the policy of making the railway company efficient and economic, thus affording the basis on which the company will be able to pay the earnings on the various moneys invested in it.

It is from that point of view that we must measure the means whereby it is proposed to secure these new earnings for this company, on the basis of what we regard as the inflated values given to the present shareholders in the existing companies. We feel, as has been indicated by other speakers, that too heavy a burden is being placed on the back of the new company. Not the slightest indication has been given by the Minister—beyond the reference to the small sum of £110,000—as to how it is hoped so to improve the operating conditions of the new company that it will attract back the traffic, which is the only condition on which it can be successful. Will it be able to do that, without forcing upon the people of the country charges for the carrying of freight and passengers which are outrageous in their weight on industry, agriculture and the private citizens or, alternatively, destroying the conditions of employment and the employment itself of many thousands of railway workers?

It is from that angle that I think there is a complete shroud of darkness around the Bill. The Minister himself is groping in the dark and hoping, by the introduction of "a miracle worker," that something may be done to give effect to the promises he made in this House. Unfortunately, the "miracle worker" is not a miracle worker. The miracle has been the existence of conditions during the past four years, under which, as Deputy Keyes has pointed out, any ordinary man with normal experience of transport could not help but be a success in running transport, where all he had to do was to find the vehicles and they would be packed immediately with goods and passengers, at any price that either the owners of the goods or the passengers were asked to pay. That is not any form of miracle working, but is a very unsure and shaky foundation on which to build the whole future of transport. When it is related, in addition, to a financial structure which commends itself to scarcely anybody but the members of the Government Bench, the outlook for this new company is one that might well cause the Minister to reconsider his attitude. He should see if some agreement could not be secured on this particular feature of the Bill, so as to relieve everybody's mind that it is not merely a question of coming back to the House later to ask for the enforcement of the guarantees embodied in the Bill but, more important still, that we do not leave the transport system of the country to run into another crisis in another few years, at a time when it may not be so easy to deal with it as it is at the moment, when we have a certain pause in our activities.

I have referred to statements made outside this House by the Chairman of the Great Southern Railways in regard to his opinion on the size of the railway staff and the conditions they work under. I am particularly concerned with the provisions of the Bill with regard to redundancy. The Minister has gone on record here and outside as saying that there will be, in his opinion, no redundancy as a result of this Bill, except in regard to administration and managerial staff. It is quite clear—and I am sure practically anybody can agree—that, if we regard redundancy as only flowing from the bare amalgamation of the two companies, possibly there will be very little redundancy. We are amalgamating a railway company and a local bus company and there will not be much conflict between the two. However, will the Minister be as certain in stating that there will be no redundancy because of alterations of working levels of either of the companies? There was protection given in former Acts, such as the 1924 Act, which laid down that a worker or employee required to take on additional services, more onerous or not analogous to the duties performed prior to the amalgamation, was entitled to consideration for compensation. It is said that that will still hold good under the present Bill. I have taken that as being correct and that, in regard to redundancy caused by the closing down of a railway line, the 1933 Act still holds good.

The 1933 Act, however, refers specifically to the closing down of a railway line following an Order by the Minister. I would like to know what happens in the case of a railway line, not closed down but which is starved to death. Over a period of years, traffic is taken away, services are curtailed and, one by one, it is shown that the staff engaged in that line is not required and may be done without; in other words, they become redundant, although they are not to blame. If we agree that the ordinary shareholder is entitled to an equitable basis, when his interest in the present company is transferred to the new company, can we deny to the railwayman with 15, 20 or 25 years' service the same equity and moral right to recognition of his claim by that company, which has been built up by himself and his fellow-workers over a period of years? His employment is taken away, not because, like the ordinary railway shareholders, he has been incompetent to run his own company but because we here, sitting in a legislative Chamber, appointed to care not merely for shareholders but also for workers, have decided by an act of law that certain new conditions would apply. As a result, this man is denied employment and thrown out of the service to which he has given many years of his life, for which he has been trained and adapted to certain technical forms of operation which, in many ways, make him unsuited to the pursuit of his livelihood outside the railway system.

The Minister, last night, was in a conciliatory mood, in speaking about this part of the Bill, and I think we should appreciate his attitude. The sections of the Bill dealing with redundancy require careful consideration and that should mean something more than extending the period to six months, to cover redundancy from amalgamations. At least, we are entitled to say that, if there is to be reorganisation of the railway system, the men who have borne this railway system on their backs over a period of years, not merely by the physical contribution of their labour to the running of the system, but also by a financial contribution as far back as 1927, are entitled to equal consideration with, or even more consideration than, the directors and shareholders.

I think it would be very helpful if the Minister would proceed on that basis, in considering amendments to the relevant sections, on the Committee Stage. That would bring a degree of comfort to many of those men who, whatever their political support may be for the Fianna Fáil Party, have great apprehension in regard to the view taken publicly by the man who is to be the first chairman of the new company, who has said that he considers there are too many men employed in the railway and that their conditions are too good for the company to maintain.

This is the most important measure we have yet discussed in this House, from the point of view of the post-war position. This country has a very large population situated in the very edge of the country and a population that at all times have not been fully maintained, due entirely to faulty transport. If we can devise a sound transport system, the people of Dublin will finally be better fed and more cheaply fed, and will receive better food and vegetables than hitherto. If we reach that stage, we would benefit not alone the workers in the City of Dublin, but producers, because all reasonable efforts have been made here to try to improve the position of farmers and workers. However, these efforts seem to have failed, to some extent, because no matter what remuneration workers or farmers are given it does not seem to be sufficient. That is due, to a large extent, to the difference that exists between the price producers get and that consumers in Dublin have to pay.

Few people will disagree with me on that point, especially those of the Labour Party, because the labouring section of the community in Dublin have suffered severely from that state of affairs. I attribute the big margin of difference in prices that exists, and the high prices that unfortunate workers have to pay for vegetables that very often have no value in the country, to the failure of transport to transfer farm produce from rural districts to the towns, where the workers have to pay very dearly for what is often very inferior quality. From that point of view, and from the point of view of public health, and prices, an efficient transport service is extremely important.

The difficulty arises because of the huge population, roughly 600,000 people, stuck in this city. I take it that we have no control over that state of affairs, but in the proposal to provide an efficient transport system we might be able to transfer some of them to another centre. As the position stands we have to face up to it. I believe the transport system in the Bill will solve many of our present transport difficulties. Formerly we associated transport with railways, but now we have grown up and include all forms of transport, mainly because we cannot put out of our minds the development of motor transport. What happened in the past seriously damaged the railway companies, because they did not see the possibilities of other methods. Now we will have the two systems working under one head. That is a great advantage. The management was very fully discussed for nearly three weeks in this House, and for a fortnight throughout the country, so that all phases of this Bill were before the people. The Labour Party does not seem to understand the Bill. At least, Deputy Larkin does not seem to understand it. He talked about nationalisation. As far as I know the proposal is that transport be nationalised. The only exception the Deputy took to that was that we had not introduced and allowed to grow up here the vicious system that grew up in other countries and that brought them to ruin. The Deputy seems to think that that system should be adopted here. I believe his objection to the Bill was restricted to that. If that is his complaint, he should have said so.

The Bill is nationalisation, inasmuch as national credit is going towards the system to help it along. I believe the Deputy misunderstood the objects of the Bill. He seemed to be piqued at the manager. I cannot say why that should be the case. If there is not an efficient manager it is the workers will suffer, as, if the company does not make a profit workers will be unemployed. It is to the workers' interest to have an expert manager in charge, because they are directly concerned with his efficiency or inefficiency. I fail to see what objection there can be to the present manager. I have no idea whether he is to be the permanent manager—I take it that he may be— but I know that he has been most efficient. The Labour Party may have an objection to the present financial methods. They may have serious objection to the system of profits, but we have no other system of and I do not believe we will have any other. Anything else is a lot of make-believe and the people expressed that opinion during the elections. The sooner we face up to realities the better. We have to function at present on a profit basis. To do that there must be efficient management, and financial rectitude in whatever financial system exists must be adhered to. There is no use in saying that we can break away from that system or that some other countries could carry on by doing so. They cannot. One of the drawbacks about the old railway system was that to a large extent its financial methods were not suitable to modern circumstances.

In this Bill provision is made for the future, as after the war we may have many new ideas on transport. A body capable of dealing efficiently with transport is being set up and a manager who is controlled only to a very limited extent. What I mean by "control" is that the affairs of the company and the money obtained to run the concern is not money that comes through this House. It would be a misfortune if that money came from this House by way of subsidies or votes, because that would bring the whole question into the political arena. We have gone far enough in that respect and we should keep the transport question out of the political arena. What has happened is an indication of the type of debates we would have if we had to pass subsidies and Votes. We would have all the pulling and twisting that they had in some European countries that adopted other methods and pulled down the whole concerns. We have an opportunity now to build up a modern transport system.

We had the Minister for Local Government and Public Health here this week indicating his intention of putting the roads into an efficient condition to carry fast motor traffic. That is all to the good. As far as I am aware Deputies in all Parties have been demanding from the Government their intentions for the post-war period. The first step would be the organisation of a sound transport system without which we could not carry on housing, building operations or other projects. All these depend upon good roads on which transport can operate. That seems to have been objected to by some Deputies. This is a national question and not a political one, and I think it is being faced in the right way. By facing it in this way instead of the Labour Party fearing that people will be unemployed I think they should feel that more people will be employed. As a matter of fact, that is in the measure. There is a guarantee to workers in the transport system that they will get their wages regularly and permanently. Nobody will deny that. That is the soundest and best thing that could be done. It may be that, by doing that, we have impaired the activities of other parties. But if that is so, we have done a good turn to those they pretend to represent. That is the duty of every Government—to see that employment is permanent and that, when men pass their period of usefulness, they will receive some allowance to enable them to live out their remaining years. In every way, the measure is one that demands the approbation and admiration of the community. The last election proved that the people believe that this is a sound measure. Such measures as this call for a good deal of cooperation. There is no use in opening up old sores. Let us forget about them and think of the future. Nobody will deny that farmers, labourers, industrialists, shopkeepers and all other classes of the community will be dependent on this system, and any amendments to this Bill which are helpful and suitable will, I am sure, be fully considered by the Minister and accepted by him, if desirable. I believe that the whole House should co-operate in trying to evolve a system of transport which will bring economic benefits to the people.

The repeated assertions by Deputy O'Reilly that the last election settled all the questions arising out of this Bill do not carry much weight. I do not think that the electors troubled themselves very much about the transport problem. They were influenced by other considerations to which it is not necessary to refer. It is true that a long and exhaustive discussion took place on the Second Reading of this Bill on the last occasion and that it was flogged to death, so to speak, during the election. A long discussion now would appear to be futile. We shall get an opportunity later of discussing the provisions in Committee, but there are Deputies in this House who represent a considerable volume of discerning opinion, and I suppose it is their intention to give expression to their views. It is not the intention of our Party to discuss the measure at any length.

We all agree with the Minister that a cheap and efficient transport service is vital to our needs. It is the desire of this Party, and I am sure of every other Party here, to co-operate with the Government in providing a transport system which will comply with that description. It appears to me extraordinary, that in re-introducing this measure, the Minister did not think it worth his while to put before the House the actual proposals of the Government for dealing with national transport. He indicated that he was prepared substantially to change his proposals in some respects. Why he has not embodied those changes in the present Bill, I do not understand. I think that it is unfair to the House to ask it to consider incomplete proposals.

The Deputy can regard them as complete proposals.

Does that mean that it is not the Minister's intention to embody the amendments which he undertook to embody a few weeks ago?

The Deputy had better refer me to the amendments I undertook to introduce.

I agree with Deputy Dwyer that there is no analogy between transport services in this country and transport services in manufacturing countries like Great Britain. We require a completely different type of service. Taking our general circumstances into account, and having regard to the average freight run of a train here, we shall require enormous road development in the post-war period. If the mind of the man who will be charged with responsibility for looking after national transport after the war is running in that direction, I should not be critical of his attitude because I believe that, in our circumstances, it is the right attitude. People in rural districts here have always suffered disadvantages because of their geographical position. We had not a service so flexible as to bring them into line with people more advantageously placed.

If we succeed in doing that, it will serve both producer and consumer. If we can service the producer in a remote district, it will be of advantage to the consumer as well. The area of supply in the City of Dublin extends for about 70 miles into the country. In the normal way, the area which would service Dublin would extend into the sea on the eastern side. I believe that, as far as agriculture is concerned, the road transport service should be fully developed. I do not say that we should drop the railway service completely but I am in agreement with those who think that all the branch lines should be lopped off. It is inevitable that that should happen. The main lines can be fed by a modern lorry service.

Section 9 gives the new company which is to be set up power of acquisition. I do not know whether that is to be compulsory or whether it is to be exercised by agreement. The compulsory provisions of the 1933 Act still remain. We have got an assurance that it is not the intention to interfere with any private enterprise. That may be the intention at the moment but if the tempo of competition becomes very keen and the new company is unable to compete, can we get an assurance that there will not be interference in those circumstances? No matter how long we may talk or how much we may plan regarding cheap and efficient transport, there is one element which ensures cheap and efficient service: that is, the normal element of competition. The more you reduce that element of competition, the greater is the danger that the consumer will have to pay more. The Minister also indicated, and quite rightly, that in the post-war period, if we are to export—and we must if we intend to import—we shall have to compete in a keener market, and cheap and efficient transport services will be more vital than ever.

So far as the provisions of the Bill generally are concerned, the worst feature is the financial aspect—whether the financial burden that will be imposed on the new company will permit a cheap transport service. The Minister pointed out that the total net revenue of the company for 1943 was £1,335,000, an increase of £675,000 over the previous year. I cannot deduce anything from that, because we all know there has been an enormous increase in freight charges; not merely the charges from one station to another, from Dublin to different areas in the country, but the delivery charges as well are infinitely higher from the railhead to the trader's yard. And it is not merely from more efficient management that the revenue has resulted but from substantial increases in freight charges, from the monopoly the company is enjoying, and the fact that all competition is cleared off the roads, due to the Minister's distribution of petrol and the fact that the railway company get substantially more petrol and greater facilities than any other transport organisation in the country.

It is not reasonable or fair to argue on that thesis, that, because this company did so well last year, that is an indication that it will do well in the future. The fact is that no proper examination has been given to the problem and there was no consultation with experts or technicians on the subject of transport proposals. Little or no information has been given to the House. The Minister has been very vague all along, not merely in the last Dáil, but when he was dealing with this matter again last night. During the election he talked a lot about cheap and efficient transport services. The phrase is a nice one if we could be satisfied that that would be the result of these proposals. Taking into consideration the capital provisions and the repayment provisions within a very short period, I cannot understand the necessity of having those debenture stocks redeemed before 1960. That provision for redemption will impose a very substantial financial burden. I think it is inevitable, if those proposals are put into operation—and I have no doubt they will—that we cannot have a cheap service, especially taking the financial provisions into account. It is difficult to relate those provisions one to the other, and the Minister has not helped the House in that respect.

There would be less dissatisfaction if the Minister could assure the House that there will not be any degree of redundancy so far as the staffs are concerned. He indicated to-day that there will be further financial burdens, due to a provision for pensioning operatives. In view of all the financial considerations, the company will have to earn certainly more than double the amount earned prior to last year. It all comes back to the valuation of what the Minister described as obsolete assets, whether the existing assets are worth the valuation put on them under this proposal. It is very easy to suggest that people financially interested in the railways are entitled to be generously treated. I consider they are magnanimously treated under these proposals, because if nothing was done about the reorganisation of the railway system, and if private enterprise were permitted to develop, the railways would disappear in a very short time.

Calculating the value of the assets, I cannot possibly agree with the suggestion that they are worth £13,500,000. That is the aspect that is worrying most people. They consider the financial provisions are of such a character that they will impose a very severe burden on the new company and it is unlikely that we will get that efficiency and cheapness so desirable and essential in the post-war period. We have to consider the profit motive which is still there. Many people believe that, in the circumstances that exist, we should convert the railway into a public utility society and remove the private profit motive. We should aim at providing a transport service that will be truly national. We should buy out whatever interests are involved and the financial liability then would merely be the servicing of that sum of money and the eventual redemption of whatever capital sum would be required for the provision of an efficient transport service. Once that capital sum is repaid it will mean that the nation will have a transport service free of any capital liability.

There are other aspects of the proposal with which we do not agree. We take strong exception to handing over to one individual complete and absolute control of the operation of a transport monopoly interest in this country and we think that the appointment of a few individuals representing the common stockholders is merely so much window-dressing because they have no power whatever. We feel that it is undesirable to put any individual in that position. This Party also disagrees with the proposed methods of fixing freight charges. The Minister has told us that the system of fixing charges by the Railway Tribunal was unwieldy and unsatisfactory and that generally his experience was that certain interests that were anxious to have an adjustment of freight charges made representations to him or to the railway company and did not use the machinery provided by law.

Whatever was wrong or unwieldy about that system of fixing freight charges, it certainly appeals to me because it meant having a judicial decision on the case made for and against the particular charge, and there was no suggestion of influence or wirepulling of any sort. It would be quite possible to improve the existing system. The principle at all events was absolutely sound. Under the new system that is introduced in this Bill, there will be an application to the Minister for an adjustment of freight charges. The Minister may immediately decide that there is no merit in the application and may turn it down and may deny the applicant an opportunity of making a case. On the other hand, he may look with favour on the application and may make a decision in his favour. In my view that system is not the wisest in the circumstances, and would not satisfy public opinion.

The Minister has indicated his intention of setting up an advisory committee. He may refer certain matters to the advisory committee, or he may not, and the advisory committee have no power to initiate any inquiry. They are in a purely advisory capacity and the Minister may accept their recommendations or he may not. In effect, my interpretation of the measure is, that the man who is going to run the railways and who is going to be the dictator so far as the operation of the transport system is concerned under the present proposals is the Minister himself, because we must remember that the manager is appointed by the Minister and can be removed from office at the will of the Minister. If the manager is not prepared to do exactly what he is told by the Minister, he must go, and that is all about it. That means that so far as the manager is concerned, so far as fixing freight charges is concerned, so far as the operation of the system is concerned, the Minister is virtually a dictator. The type of company that will be set up is neither a private company nor a public utility company, and this House will have no opportunity by way of Parliamentary Question or by periodical discussion of reviewing the operation of the company. I suggest that that is most unsatisfactory.

One of the advantages of setting up a public utility company is that Parliament could occasionally review the work of the company. It might be very undesirable to have the company and the board of the company hampered by weekly Parliamentary Questions so far as day-to-day administration was concerned but surely it would be desirable to have an annual report put on the Table of the House and an opportunity given of discussing the work of the board, whenever necessary, just as the work of the board of the Electricity Supply Board can be made the subject of a Parliamentary Question or discussed by way of motion, if necessary, at any time. We feel that in our circumstances that is the ideal system and the most effective method of dealing with the problem of national transport.

There are many aspects of the Bill with which we are not in agreement and which we think should be drastically amended. It is a measure which has been debated exhaustively in the House and again during the election, and we do not propose to debate it at length at the present time.

Deputy O'Reilly usually makes useful contributions to the debates in the Dáil and I rarely find myself in violent disagreement with him; but to-day I have to disagree with some statements which he made during the course of his speech. I am in full agreement with Deputy O'Reilly when he says that this is a national proposition and that it should be carried out in a proper way. I do not wish to deal with the manner in which this Bill has been introduced. Deputy O'Reilly made one statement on which I can congratulate him for his honesty. He stated that a general election was fought on this Bill and that the Government had won. That cannot be denied. Therefore, I see the futility of delaying the House in making long contributions to this debate. Intelligent and constructive opposition can be most useful in this as in Parliaments in other countries. A good opposition will make its impress on every Act of any legislative assembly. We know that this Bill will be steam-rolled through the Dáil and, in my view, most unbusinesslike methods were used in its introduction and in going to the country, when the Government was defeated by one vote, and stampeding the electors into returning the Fianna Fáil Government with the majority that it has at the present moment.

From what I have heard during the debate on this Transport Bill I feel that many Deputies on both sides of the House have not made themselves conversant with all the facts. One cannot understand the implications of this Bill without having read in conjunction with it the report of the Transport Tribunal set up by the Minister. To read the report of that tribunal in connection with the present Bill is the only way in which one can be in a position to offer useful criticism. When I say that, I do not want to have it read into my remarks that I believe that all the criticism that has been so far levelled at the measure has been of a useless kind. I have taken the trouble to read the report of the Transport Tribunal and, as far as I could, to digest the Bill. That is rather a huge undertaking, as I think the Minister will admit, seeing that he took so long to draft the first Transport Bill although he gave us in the last Dáil only two or three week-ends to consider it. In view of what the Minister must know of the duties devolving upon a Dáil Deputy, that was, in my opinion, an unfair way in which to treat the House and the general public. But now we know, in view of the gambling which took place before this Bill was brought in, and that subsequently took place, that some peculiar things happened. This Bill proposes that the Government shall guarantee the interest on and repayment in full of over £8,000,000 of the nominal capital of the company. That is a relatively small amount of money in the national expenditure, but at the same time, in arriving at this figure and at an estimate of the assets of the company, I would say it was the most unbusinesslike method that I ever heard of, read of, or experienced. The Minister is reported in the Official Reports of 9th May, col. 2441, as saying in the Dáil:—

"... remember that every £100 nominal value now held by these shareholders represents an original investment of £1,000."

That is a matter that Deputies should consider very carefully. After this gambling which took place on the stock exchange, a statement of that kind should be carefully considered by Deputies and others outside the House. This Bill which, as I said, guarantees the repayment of this £8,000,000 in cash to the stockholders, has some very disturbing features. The tribunal appointed by the Minister reported in 1939 that the value of the stocks concerned for stock exchange purposes was only about £4,000,000. That report of the Transport Tribunal is at the disposal of any Deputy who takes time to read it. Another important witness giving evidence before the tribunal said the whole concern was worth only about £4,000,000.

Will the Deputy refer me to the page of the tribunal's report in which they say that?

I have not got it here now.

I do not think the Deputy studied the report very carefully.

I would have to bring five or six volumes of the report here.

It would be easy for the Deputy to put it into his pocket. The Deputy was advising other Deputies to read the report when he has not read it himself.

A witness stated that the whole concern was worth only about £4,000,000. That is the statement made at the Railway Stocks Tribunal by no less a person than the Governor of the Bank of Ireland. I think I am correct in saying that.

I do not think so.

One is tempted to ask why this valuation was not made before the introduction of the Bill. As a business-like proposition, this would not be tolerated in a huckster's shop— that you would not have a valuation made before the sale. Is it not most unbusiness-like that even now we have had no valuation made of the stocks or assets of that company? In the Official Reports of the same date, column 2445, the Minister is reported as saying:—

"It is impossible to determine what is the precise value of the fixed assets of the company."

But we might ask the Minister at this stage if he suggests that it was a business-like proposition to ram the Bill down the people's throats without giving a valuation of the assets of the company. Would he do it if he had a business of his own?

Does the Deputy want to know how much the fixed assets cost?

No; the valuation.

What they are worth now?

I do not know what they are worth now.

What do you mean by a valuation?

I should like to know.

So would I.

It is your business to know.

What does the Deputy mean?

As reported in the Official Reports, vol. 93, col. 2346, Deputy McGilligan asked the Minister what the Bill meant the company would have to earn to pay for the railway stocks to be exchanged alone, and the Minister replied that under the Bill the company would need £917,514 for interest on debentures, sinking fund, and for 1 per cent. on the common stock. The Minister further stated, and I quote his exact words:

"£917,514 exceeds by £349,669 per year the average adjusted net income of the Great Southern Railways Company for the 14 years, 1925 to 1938."

We were told later on that the railway company had only provided an average of £13,097 per year for depreciation. In the Report of the Transport Tribunal to which I referred, Dr. Kennedy shows that, if adequate provision for depreciation had been made between 1930 and 1938, the adjusted net operating income of the railway company would be around £300,000 a year. Under the Bill, the new company must earn over £900,000 a year. In view of the deterioration that must have taken place in the rolling stock and all the painting, etc., that is required at various railway stations and offices; in view of the coal position, and in view of all the things that we anticipate in the post-war period, would the Minister indicate how that £900,000 is to be earned to keep the railway going as a business concern? That would be very interesting to the House and to people outside.

On Tuesday, May 9th, the Minister stated—I quote his own words:

"The Great Southern Railways Company is losing revenue at the rate of £20,000 per week."

We know from reports of the evidence before the tribunal that heavy purchasing was taking place last year. In March, 1943, Mr. Reynolds told the stockholders that, if there had been proper provision for depreciation in the past, they would probably never have got a dividend. He went on to ask: No matter what the railway charged for its services, could it pay, in the future, dividends on its existing capital? These words should be emphasised—"existing capital." The Minister spoke later on of the dire position of the railways. In October, the company, in its circular, said that it could not raise any capital without Government guarantees. Now, when we propose to hand out £8,000,000 to this company without a full investigation, I think a further explanation of these facts should be given to the House by the Minister. I do not at all under-estimate the capabilities of the Minister or challenge his honesty of purpose—I think nobody in this House can—but I feel that he should give us a more detailed account of the manner in which it is proposed to earn this huge amount of money, in view of the circumstances I have stated, the condition of the rolling stock and the other assets that are necessary for a railway in order to suit modern transport. I will not say anything about the Minister's acrobatics in regard to the Bill, and how he threw himself, out of the ring and back again at the election after he refused to accept the decision of the House. But I have to compliment him on his statement yesterday, when he indicated that he would be agreeable to render some of these sections less ambiguous than they are and to accept reasonable amendments to the Bill. Some suggestions have been made this afternoon which, I think, should receive his sympathetic consideration. But I should like him to explain to the House how this extra revenue is to be earned within the next half-dozen years or longer in view of the circumstances I have stated.

We had such an exhaustive discussion on this particular subject on the occasion of the last Second Reading that I suppose there is very little that can be said on the subject from a new angle, except at the risk of being repetitious. To my mind, however, the Bill has had some good effect. One is that the State has extended the guarantee of debentures, so far as the State is concerned, to this new institution, but I think that, so far as this House is concerned, we should have been brought into closer relationship with the functions of this new company, seeing that the State is guaranteeing this money. I think it would have been wiser to have brought in some means by which we would ensure that at least once or twice a year, as, for instance, in the case of the Post Office Estimate or other Estimates, this House should have an opportunity of reviewing the policy so far as the activities of the new company are concerned. However, in view of the fact that we shall have time on the Committee Stage, where the real work will be done so far as the Bill is concerned, to discuss these matters, I shall not enter into them in detail now. Deputies who have a particular interest in certain sections of the Bill will then have an opportunity of dealing with these matters. So far as I am concerned, I may say that my main interest in the Bill is in connection with the staffs of both companies, and I am interested to know how they will be affected. The Minister has already heard from this bench, and from the House as a whole, questions on such matters as redundancy, compensation, superannuation schemes, rates of wages and conditions of work, as well as the rights of trade union representatives. Nevertheless, I should like to urge on the Minister again the necessity for carefully considering these matters, because I feel certain that he has an idea of the feeling of the staffs and knows that they are matters of very great importance to the people concerned.

On the question of redundancy, some of the previous speakers indicated or suggested that Section 9 of the 1933 Act might not apply, so far as the Minister is concerned. Now, I think that the Minister is only too well aware that that particular section is very limited in its scope and its possible operation. It can only operate on the direct order of the Minister, so far as the closing of a branch railway line is concerned. Now, it happens that one case was brought to my notice recently, where traffic was taken from railway wagons at Kingsbridge and diverted for carriage by road to destinations as far away as Kilmallock and Charleville. That may have been necessary in the particular case concerned, but it can quite easily be understood that such a policy might be indefinitely pursued by officials who had a bias in favour of road traffic as against railway traffic proper. There is, undoubtedly, that danger, and what might happen is that, although the line concerned need not necessarily be closed down, it could be so denuded of traffic as to leave a section of the old staff, that had been brought in for the purpose of the operation of that line, without any work to do, and, accordingly, it would appear that they could be dismissed without compensation. Possibly, of course, that angle has been already considered by the Minister, and we may be able to discuss it on the Committee Stage, but to my mind there seems to be a very serious omission there, and I should like the Minister to take note of it because I may inform him that it is causing considerable apprehension at the present time so far as the staffs of the railways are concerned. There is in this Bill the omission of a very vital clause which was included in the 1924 and 1926 Acts, concerning what are described as analogous duties. Under this Bill, no provision is made for the staff who remain in the service under such conditions, as distinct from those who are described as redundant.

Let me give an example. Because of such a condition as I have described, the closing down of a branch line, or some such occurrence, a man may be transferred from one post to another. In the new post he may be called upon to perform duties which he is not competent to discharge. Because of his lack of experience in that particular kind of duty, he cannot be expected to be competent in it, but, in consequence of his lack of experience, he may be dismissed and be given no compensation. Now, that could quite easily happen, and there is no provision here to ensure that the staff would be covered, in the case of such incidents, so far as compensation is concerned.

The Minister will recall that on the last occasion he gave certain assurances in connection with this matter, and that I drew attention to Section 55 of the 1924 Act, which laid down certain provisions with regard to rates of wages and conditions of service. I think the Minister said that it was intended that that particular clause should apply to this Bill. I am sure the Minister is aware that there is a complementary clause to that to be found in the 1934 Act, so far as road transport employees are concerned, but these employees are supposed to be railway employees, and the new company, I presume, will be composed of both types of employees, and I think that, not only at the present moment but in the future, their employees should come within the scope of Section 10 and should be given whatever protection is to be afforded.

Now, I am particularly interested in the question of superannuation so far as the staffs are concerned, and I am grateful to the Minister for the statement that he made last night, in which he admitted quite frankly that it was a very complex subject and one with which he was not very familiar. I certainly do not blame the Minister for that, because, I admit, quite frankly, that it is a very complex subject, and so far as the members themselves, who are retiring, are concerned, they certainly are not familiar with the various clauses, and it is a subject that is causing a lot of difficulty.

As the Minister, I am sure, is aware, the superannuation fund was established some 70 years ago on the English Railway Clearing House system, and about five years afterwards the Irish Clearing House became a party to the fund, and in that way the benefits and services of that corporation were extended to this country so far as railway staffs in Ireland were concerned. The Minister last night indicated that the fund was insolvent, or, at least, that it was badly managed, but I think he has been misinformed in regard to that matter, and I should like to correct him. It has been ascertained that at all times the fund has been solvent actuarially, and that its management was efficient. The management consisted of a joint board, recruited roughly, from the staffs and from the management. I think it consisted of six members recruited from the staffs and six from the managements, and these representatives sat on equal terms on that board and administered the purely domestic side of the fund. The weaknesses of the fund were as follows. In the first place, because of the comparatively small contribution, which was 2½ per cent., and the low earnings in the way of salaries or wages of the staffs in the early years, the payments under that fund, inevitably, were low and deemed to be unsatisfactory by the staffs concerned, but that corporation, styled the Railway Clearing House System, could not be blamed for that, because they were dealing with conditions within which they were limited, that is, a rates contribution based on low salaries.

Actually, in practice, what happened was that when a man was retiring under that fund, he got roughly about 50 per cent. of his retiring salary which up to 1919 was on a very low basis. An agitation went on for a considerable time, not alone in Great Britain but on the Irish railways, for a reorganisation of this fund, and eventually in 1941 there was a reorganisation of the fund, as a result of which the contribution was raised to 4 per cent. as far as the staff was concerned. The Minister might also bear in mind that this contribution was based on a higher salary, and the effect of the reorganisation meant that the average pension was raised from about 50 per cent. to roughly 62 per cent. of the retiring salary. In effect the recipient benefited by an increase of about 12½ per cent. to his pension, but it did something more, inasmuch that it provided that the retiring official was to get a capital sum of a year's salary on retirement. The new conditions were very acceptable to the staff, and they were prepared to pay the increase from 2½ per cent. to 4 per cent. in the contribution as they were getting value for it.

The next step was to get the assent of the companies to the new arrangement and that assent was given in all cases except in the case of the Great Southern Railways. The Great Northern Railways Company, the County Down Railway Company, the Northern Counties Company and the Irish Railway Clearing House, which is an ancillary company, all gave their assent, but the Great Southern Railways Company for the last two or three years have resisted all approaches to get their assent. They, however, gave what is known as supplements, not on any definite fixed basis, to members of the staff, but it is not quite clear to members of the staff how far these supplements would go to make up what they were entitled to under the organised fund. It may be that the company fears there are certain financial risks in assenting to this scheme. They may feel that the question of increased costs, so far as contributions are concerned, will arise and that there may be another risk, that because the fund is domiciled in London there may be objections to giving assent to a fund so administered. I am going to tell the Minister —and I can speak with authority on the subject because I am in touch with the staff representatives on the joint committee—that in order to ensure that the benefits of the new fund will flow to members of the staff of the Great Southern Railways Company, they are prepared, in conjunction with the management of the fund itself, to repatriate funds lying to the credit of members of the Great Southern Railways staff here in Ireland, to the extent of £900,000, as a capital sum towards the initiation of a new fund. There is one condition only, that the management of the fund will insist that benefits at least equal to the best that are operating on the various other railways will be extended to the members here in the service of the Great Southern Railways. I suggest to the Minister that if there is still some objection, because this fund is placed at the far side, there is no financial or any other reason why that fund could not be set up here on the basis of repatriation to which I have referred. The management of the fund will gladly consent to that on the one condition which I have outlined.

Last night the Minister referred to the question of the solvency of the fund and perhaps he confused that matter with the question of the solvent age which is a different matter. In fact the fund has always been administered on an actuarially sound basis. There is a quinquennial valuation and the question of the solvent age was introduced at a very early stage. The solvent age was first fixed at 68 years of age; if a member retired at 60 years the employing company would have to pay the full pension as between 60 and 68. In other words, to ensure its solvency his pension would not be charged on the fund between these ages. That principle has been adhered to always but as the fund progressed because of the reason I have given, the solvent age was gradually reduced. It was lowered first to 65 years and I believe it stands to-day at something like 62½, so that there is no question of the fund being in a state of insolvency. The Minister, last night, indicated—and I was very glad to hear it as were some other persons who happened to be affected and who were present in the House—when I suggested that a system of supplements over and above the ordinary pension would be unsatisfactory if given in a form that might be termed ex gratia grants, that that was not the intention but that these supplements would be paid as a matter of right rather than as ex gratia payments. I have gone into this matter in some detail because the Minister was quite frank last night in indicating that he was not aware of the history of this matter. I am hopeful that by direct action on the part of the Minister or by a suitable amendment which we shall draft, this particular trouble will be cleared out of the way once and for all.

I do not intend to say anything on this Bill. Like most other Deputies, I said a fair amount a short time ago and I did not intend to refer to the Bill again, but I was touched by a question which Deputy Anthony put to the Minister. In my experience, Ministers here have a little habit of sometimes not answering questions that are put to them. That may be due to the triviality or the awkwardness of the question; I leave that to the House to decide, but in this particular instance Deputy Anthony put a question to the Minister which, in my opinion, is really at the root of the objection which many people have to this Bill. He asked how was the sum of £900,000 to be found. I would say to him that, in my opinion, there are only two ways in which that can be found and that they will follow this Bill inevitably. One is to increase the charges to the community in general, the passengers, and to increase the prices charged to the commercial community for the transport of goods. The penny fare will certainly become 1½d., possibly 2d., and the 6d. charge for a small parcel will probably go up to 1/- or 9d. The curtailment of the existing competition which the railways had to face will be the second step. I think the public ought to realise that that is what will happen as a result of this Bill.

I do not propose to delay very long, because of the rather protracted discussion which took place on the first occasion on which this Bill was before us and the vigorous, although not quite so protracted, discussion which took place during the election. There are, however, a couple of matters which the Minister mentioned last night and in the course of his reply on the Second Reading on the previous occasion which was rather interesting information and which was not available when the Bill was originally introduced. One of these is that, last year, the company made double what it made the previous year. The Minister went on to say that the reason for that success was principally good management. I wonder could the Minister give us the figures for the company's profits from January, 1943, to June, 1943, and then from July to December, 1943? I understand that the increased charges came into operation in May, and it would be interesting to compare the figures up to that month with the figures in the subsequent months. When I asked last night, he was unable to give the actual figures, but he might possibly be able to give the half-year's figures now.

I am inclined to think that while a certain amount of credit may be due to efficiency and to a lessening of unnecessary expenses, which, at any rate up to last year, marked the management of this company, a good deal of the profit made last year was due to the increased charges. In his reply on the Second Reading, the Minister mentioned that the increased charges were not mainly the reason for the increased revenue of the company. He went on to say that it was a complete fallacy to attribute the success of the company to the increased charges, and then said:—

"Let me say that the increases in charges which were authorised did not in any case bring these charges over and above the standard charges approved for the company by the Railway Tribunal. Deputies will have to understand that."

I put it to the Minister that there is a very great difference between what the tribunal might authorise and what the company might make due to increased charges. The tribunal might agree to one figure, but the fact that the company increased its profits considerably, due to charges which were not in excess of those which would be authorised by the Railway Tribunal, is no answer to my argument, unless the Minister has figures which will refute my argument, that, while the company has been better managed in the last couple of years, the real reason for the profits last year was the increased charges, on the one hand, and the fact that other transport facilities were not available, on the other. I find it difficult to get the figures. The Minister on each occasion on which he speaks on transport gives better figures so far as the position of the company is concerned, but I am inclined to think that the position of the company is too prosperous at present to warrant the confidence the Minister has in the new undertaking. So far as I can see, the present management has been more successful than any management which has as yet dealt with the company, but the real reasons for its success are the emergency conditions which prevail and which prevent other transport people from operating and securing the carriage of goods and passengers.

The second matter is that of control, which is dealt with in Sections 35 to 40. Here, again, the Minister was inclined, to be generous in replying to the previous Second Reading debate. He said:—

"Now, we are told here that it is wrong to give the powers contemplated in this Bill to one man. Let me say straight away, that it is not a matter of principle with me whether the Government's representation on this board should be confined to one person or more."

The Minister is a competent debater. He is, in fact, a consummate debater, and again here, he states only one side of the position. Our objection, and the objection of most Deputies, to the control proposed is not to the Government's having one or two men, but the fact that the chairman, as the Bill stands, can constitute a quorum and can arrive at decisions on his own. The Minister's reason for that is that if the other members stayed away, it would not be possible for them to render meetings abortive. I think it is possible to frame the section so that the quorum shall be not less than two or three, of which one must be the chairman.

It is quite likely that the board will function efficiently even under the section as it stands, and it is also likely that the Minister's belief in the all-powerful chairman is strengthened by the fact that personal relations of a helpful and harmonious kind have existed, but there is no guarantee that, with a different chairman and a different Minister, or, in future, when there will probably be an entirely different board, the same harmony will prevail. It would be better to frame legislation in the light of conditions in which individuals might not have the same close contact or the same facilities for working together as I imagine the Minister envisages in this case. The second matter is that if the board is constituted of members whose opinions are not to be taken—and, even if they are taken, no decision can be arrived at without the chairman's consent—it is quite likely to lead to a state of affairs in which none of these members will attend because their opinions are not considered.

The Minister says he does not want the board to operate against the public interest, but my idea of the public interest and the Minister's may differ. The public interest, as I understand it, means that the public should get the best possible service and that no individual, or group of individuals, should interfere with their getting that service, but there is the danger, which is strengthened by experience of the Fianna Fáil regime, that if any influence can be brought to bear on Fianna Fáil circles, it will outweigh the public interest. I think it is a matter that should be amended to allow at least a quorum of two or three, of whom the chairman would be one, instead of allowing the chairman to have an over-all authority or an over-all power to decide against the majority of the board. The Minister, in the course of the Second Reading debate on the last occasion, indicated that he would be prepared to accept amendments. I do not know if he is still of that frame of mind. If he is still prepared to accept amendments concerning the control, and concerning the sections dealing with redundancy —I think he has already indicated his willingness to accept them in that case —I would be prepared to vote for the Bill, but I must say that the type of control which is at present given in the Bill does not appeal to me, for the simple reason that, when an individual having the confidence of the Government and having the ear of the Government, and over whom the Government has strong influence, even though it should be in the public interest, is placed in that position, there is no guarantee, particularly in view of the later sections of the Bill dealing with the fixing of charges and so on, that it will not be used for political ends rather than for national ends. With a Party not so desperate as the Fianna Fáil Party is to secure political appreciation by the public, or to secure support, it might work in those circumstances, but so far as I can see there is no justification whatever for granting those powers and those controls to an individual under the Fianna Fáil Government. I do not think there are any other points to which I want to refer now, because most of the matters in this Bill can be better dealt with on the Committee Stage.

The Minister, in a previous speech made in this House when introducing the Transport (No. 1) Bill, admitted that he had evidence of the sincere desire of the members of this group to help him to establish a sound transport system in the country. In view of the fact that we knew that this Bill was coming along we spent some time in framing proposals, and those proposals, when finally agreed on, were submitted to the Minister for his information and guidance. When I heard that the Minister intended to reintroduce the original Bill, now given the title of Transport (No. 2) Bill, I assumed—I find now that I was wrong —that he would recast the Bill in such a way as to make it fit in with the promises of drastic amendments which he gave to the House in the Eleventh Dáil, and also make it fit in with the further promises of further drastic amendments which he made during the course of the general election campaign, but this Bill is brought in here with only one or two minor alterations as compared with the Transport (No. 1) Bill. The only alterations which appear to have been made are the date of the coming into operation of the measure in whatever form it may pass in its final stages through this House, and the date fixed for terminating the rights of workers to compensation— that is, whatever section of them may become redundant as a result of the coming into operation of the measure. I should like the Minister, when he is replying to-night, to take the House into his confidence, and to tell us the reason why Mr. Reynolds, the present chairman, came to him on a certain date, which he admitted, and pleaded with him or appealed to him to withdraw this Bill. What grounds did Mr. Reynolds give to the Minister for his appeal to withdraw this Bill? What was wrong with the Bill compared with the Bill when it was originally introduced? Did he get frightened at the way in which the contents of this measure were exposed to the public, and did he feel so frightened that he pressed the Minister to withdraw the measure and possibly to reintroduce it in a totally different form?

The Minister, in his previous statements in the House, talked a good deal about the present prosperous position of the Dublin Transport Company and the Great Southern Railways Company being due, as he said, to good, sound financial management. I think it is due to the conditions that were created for the transport company by previous measures passed by this House, and I should like to get on the records of the House some very interesting figures in regard to the financial history of the Dublin Transport Company. The original capital of the Dublin United Tramway Company, as it was then called, was £1,260,000. Since the establishment of that company, and up to the time of the alteration of the title of the concern, the shareholders received by way of dividends two and a half times the amount of the original capital, and the last balance sheet which is made available for members of the public, that is the 1943 balance sheet, discloses a most extraordinary state of affairs, created mainly by the monopoly which was given by this House to this transport company by the Act of 1933. In the 1943 balance sheet, the assets are shown as:—Fixed assets: land and buildings, £161,000; buses—after depreciation was provided for, I presume —£184,000; trams, £57,000—trams that are supposed to be obsolete; plant and machinery, £24,000; then current assets, £98,000; pension fund, £25,000. The total of the fixed assets and the current assets, as they are described in the balance sheet, is £549,000, whereas the goodwill created by the monopoly given by this House under the Act of 1930 is put down at the remarkable and, in my opinion, sensational figure of £1,671,500. Who fixed the value of the goodwill given to this company at £1,671,500? That is a very good reason, I presume, why the shareholders of the tramway company did not want arbitration in connection with the figure fixed, under the terms of this Bill, for compensation. Under the terms of this Bill, with the value of the goodwill shown at that extraordinary figure, the compensation of the directors of the tramway company is going to be at the rate of £145 for every £100 shares held. That basis could not be fixed were it not for the extraordinary figure shown in the balance sheet as representing goodwill.

I do not know whether Deputy O'Reilly would like to reconsider what he said in the House here this evening, or whether he would take the figures which I am accurately quoting from the balance sheet as being correct. I know that Deputy O'Reilly speaks quite sincerely on every matter that comes before the House, but does he know that the original shareholders received, since the date of the establishment of the tram company, two and a half times the amount of the original capital by way of dividends, and that now, by an Act of this House, their goodwill and interest in the reconstituted company is fixed for compensation purposes at the extravagant figure of £1,671,000? I wonder would the Deputy take some of these figures home for the week-end, examine them closely and relate them to the conscientious outlook that he takes upon most matters?

A great deal of what has been said about the financial success of the Great Southern Railways Company has been grossly exaggerated and not related in any way to the realities by the Minister or by anybody who stands over this Bill as originally introduced. If that company is in a sound financial position to-day it is not due to the activities of any particular individual, whether it be the chairman-dictator, any member of the board or any official of the company, but rather to the circumstances created as a result of the emergency; the shortage of petrol, and, consequent on that, the shutting down of thousands of commercial lorries which meant a diversion of traffic previously carried by them to the road services of the Great Southern Railways and to the rail services. It is also due to the fact that, from July of last year, the special and exceptional rates were abolished by a stroke of the pen. There was a considerable increase in the ordinary rates, which, I understand, brought in between £300,000 and £400,000 for a full year. It is also due to the fact that passenger return fares were suspended and single fares substituted. That meant that the income from passengers using the railways went up by about 20 per cent. The Minister, I believe, knows sufficient about the working of the Great Southern Railways to know that what I am now stating is a fact. The extraordinary thing is that he wants people to believe that the successful management of the company, over the past year in particular, has been due to the activities of one man who has no technical knowledge of the working of railways. Any claim of that sort is all "cod," all boloney, in plain language.

The Minister has correctly stated on two or three occasions that the scheme in the Bill provides for a long-term plan for the reorganisation of the transport industry. I accept that as a correct explanation of the scheme in the Bill. The Minister will have to admit that a long-term plan for the reorganisation of the transport industry could not possibly come into operation before the end of the emergency, or perhaps for a year or two after the emergency has ceased to exist. If the rolling stock of the railways is to be substituted by modern rolling stock, and if the permanent way, which is in urgent need of reconstruction and repair, is to be reconstructed, then the machinery and material urgently needed, even to-day, for that purpose, cannot be secured before the end of the emergency, or, possibly, for some long time after it. If, as some people suggest, the main trunk lines of the railways are to be electrified, the midland section, the southern section, the suburban and south-eastern sections, the materials needed for that purpose cannot be obtained for a long period of years. That being so, I suggest that the redundancy which is likely to arise, so far as the workers are concerned, will not arise, or expose itself, until this reorganisation scheme is carried out in its entirety. If that is so, why fix in this Bill the 1st July, 1945, as the date inside which compensation for redundancy is going to be provided for? If, for the sake of argument, the scheme of reorganisation in its entirety is not going to be completed until the 1st July, 1947, surely the workers who become redundant at the end of that particular period will not, under the terms of this Bill, get compensation of any kind?

The Minister, when speaking on the Bill last night, said that redundancy will arise immediately. How, in the name of goodness, will it if the scheme of reorganisation is not completed immediately? If, for instance, the use of the Drumm battery were to be extended generally to our passenger train services, the Minister must know perfectly well that a number of men on the locomotive staffs would become redundant the moment that took place. I suggest to the Minister that he has been wrongly advised and is not stating the position correctly when he says that redundancy amongst the workers will immediately arise. By saying that, he is endeavouring to justify the inclusion of the date, 1st July, 1945, in the Bill beyond which compensation for redundancy cannot be paid.

We are opposed to the Second Reading of this Bill, and if there is a division on it we will feel bound to vote against it, because the policy enshrined in it is in complete conflict with the policy of the Labour Party. The policy of the Party is the public ownership of all sections of our transport services. The Minister for Industry and Commerce himself was a most eloquent advocate of that policy up to the time that he took responsibility for the introduction of this measure. His speeches on that matter from 1931 up to the concluding stage of the 1933 Transport Bill have been quoted several times in the House. On the Fifth Stage of the Transport Bill of 1933, he said "that was the last chance that was being given to the private ownership of transport services in this country", that private ownership, under the terms of the 1933 Bill, had failed, and that the next inevitable step was the introduction of a scheme for the public ownership and control of all transport services. This is not a scheme for bringing the transport services of the country under a system of public ownership. It is a scheme which guarantees the taxpayers' money, in certain circumstances, for the payment of 3 per cent. interest on £16,000,000. It is a scheme to provide the guarantee of the taxpayers to bolster up the private ownership system of our transport services. The most objectionable feature of the Bill is that if it is put into operation in its present form, and the scheme propounded in it fails, the taxpayers will have to find an annual sum of £480,000 to meet the guarantees given for the £16,000,000 in debentures. Although that is so, and although we are recognised as the duly elected representatives of the taxpayers, we will not be allowed to raise one question in this House, immediately this Bill becomes law, although the taxpayers are to be mulcted. If, at any stage during the sixteen years I refer to, the company has not been able to earn £480,000 per annum—the sum necessary to be raised for that particular purpose— either the trading and travelling public or the taxpayers must provide that sum; but, notwithstanding that, the elected representatives of the people will not be allowed to say one word in criticism of the administration of the Bill after it becomes law.

What would the Deputy do? What is his suggestion?

I have asked the Deputy to take home with him the figures which I quoted in connection with the financial position of the Dublin United Transport Company, to study them over the week-end and, when he comes back, to tell us what he thinks of the whole position when the Bill comes under consideration in the House. I am asking him and other Deputies whether we can vote the money of the taxpayers to give guarantees of this kind and, having done so and having been a party to the passage of this measure in its present form, deprive ourselves of the right given to the elected representatives of the people to criticise the administration of any concern in which the taxpayers' money is invested or guaranteed.

Several previous speakers have objected to the principles contained in this Bill to hand over the administration of the concern to one man. I do not want to delay the House in connection with that matter, as it was fully developed by previous speakers. I certainly would not dream, under any circumstances, of handing over the sole control of a huge concern of this kind to the mercy of any one man, even if he were recommended to this House by the College of Cardinals. I would not give him the power the Minister proposes to give. It is a dangerous experiment and the man himself, whether he be the present chairman-dictator of the Great Southern Railways or someone else, is having placed on his shoulders a responsibility which it is not fair to place on any human being, especially when the person has no technical knowledge of any kind of the working of the transport industry.

I may be wrong, but I understood from the Minister, when he was concluding the discussion just previous to the ordering of the general election, that he had some doubt in his mind as to whether this was an advisable course to pursue. I wonder if he has changed his mind since. In any case, I would urge him very strongly to follow the advice tendered to him on that point by previous speakers from these and other benches and by Deputy McCarthy, in his very able speech this evening. Though I do not know him personally, I congratulate Deputy McCarthy on the very constructive speech he made this evening, particularly in connection with the section which proposes to give full control of our future transport services to one man.

There are sections proposing to provide compensation for the directors who may retire or be declared redundant when the Bill comes into operation. I would like to draw Deputy O'Reilly's attention to the difference between the terms of compensation provided for such directors and the limited compensation which will be paid to railway or transport workers who may become redundant under Section 41. Under Section 40, the directors who are lucky enough to be in office when this measure comes into operation and who may decide to retire not later than seven days after the stockholders' meetings to be held in 1945 will, in the case of a director of one dissolved company, receive the fees payable as director of that company during the appointed period. If he happens to be—as some of them are—a director of the two companies concerned in the contents of this Bill, he will get the equivalent of two years' fees from both companies. I understand that the directors who are associated with the Dublin United Transport Company and with the Great Southern Railways are also directors of several other big public companies in this country.

I am informed that one of the directors, one of the lucky ones who will get compensation from the two companies, is chairman of four companies and an ordinary director of eight other companies. He will get the average fee that he draws from both companies per year for two years. The average fees drawn, with other things thrown in, is not less than £1,000 a year. One of the directors at least, under the terms of Section 40, will get at least £4,000, if not more. I do not know whether expenses will be added to what is known as fees, but if they are, the gentlemen concerned will get about £7,000. If the managing director of one of the companies retires from one company, I am informed that his compensation would amount to £12,500 —a very generous sum—in addition to the fact that the man will also be getting £145 for every £100 of shares that he holds in the Dublin United Transport Company.

Compare that with the compensation terms—unfairly limited to a particular period—which will be given to the transport workers who will lose their employment. I wonder if Deputy O'Reilly and other Deputies who have taken an active interest in this discussion have studied the Bill from that particular angle. If they have, they must—and I hope they will—admit on Committee Stage that there is some case for paying railway workers, who carry on the concern from day to day, on the same generous compensation basis as is being provided for the directors who may retire or be declared redundant.

I am very glad to see that the Minister is proposing to set up a transport advisory committee. I would like him to elaborate on the type of committee he has in mind—whether the chairman will be a full-time servant of the State and whether two of the other members will also be full-time or part-time members of the Department of Industry and Commerce or members of the staff of the new concern. It is not very clear to me what the actual position of the chairman will be. Section 60 proposes to set up this committee and says it shall consist of five members and that the chairman shall be nominated by, and may be removed from office by, the Minister. Is that chairman to be a permanent member of the staff of the Department of Industry and Commerce or is he going to be a member of the staff of the new company? Then there is one ordinary member who shall be nominated by the Minister for Agriculture and three ordinary members who shall be nominated by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I would be glad to have a little more information from the Minister on that point, when he is replying to the discussion. In any case, I am very glad to see that the Minister is making provision for the establishing of such a body.

In his reply on a previous occasion the Minister gave an assurance—and I was delighted to hear him give it— that he would allow no one to interfere with the constitutional right of railway and transport workers to join or to remain members of trades unions of their own choice. Deputy Keyes has drawn attention in a speech he delivered to-day to what I consider to be a most uncalled for interference by the present chairman of the Great Southern Railways Company with the rights of railway workers, even since the Minister gave that assurance to the House. If the Minister means what he said in the House—and I certainly accept it that he does—railway and transport workers are entitled to join or to remain members of trade unions of their own choice. I think it is entirely wrong and outside the business of the chairman of the Great Southern Railway Company to give a permit to a trades union organiser to interfere with railway workers during working hours for the purpose of seducing them from their allegiance to unions of which they have been members for many years. That happened recently at the Broadstone railway works. I strongly urge the Minister to seek the opportunity to have a conversation with the chairman of the company, and to point out to him that he meant what he said when he gave the assurance to Deputies a few weeks ago. The Minister also gave an assurance to the House that existing rights regarding conditions of service, the method of negotiating or of altering conditions of service would be retained, and that trade unions of organised railway workers would have the rights which he says they had under the existing law. Whenever any alterations are proposed in the position of transport workers the Minister gave an emphatic assurance that the rights contained in Section 55 of the Transport Act, 1924, would still operate, and that existing rights in regard to these matters would be retained in the future.

I am drawing the attention of the Minister to one very serious matter. The Minister stated to-day in reply to Deputy Larkin that he had been acquainted with the terms of the new pension scheme for employees of the Great Southern Railways Company. One section under the heading "Pension Scheme" reads as follows:—

"It will be a condition of employment that all eligible employees engaged after the commencing date shall become members of the scheme on their appointment."

The commencing date of this scheme is supposed to be August 1st of this year. The point I want to make is this: Here are particulars of the proposed pension scheme, concerning which trade union representatives of the railway workers have not been consulted, and clearly involving an alteration in the conditions of service of existing employees. In my opinion the failure of the chairman of the railway company to consult with trade unions of organised transport workers is a definite breach of the conditions contained in Section 55 of the Act of 1924. It is an alteration in the conditions of employment of the workers concerned as the recognised trade union representatives have not been consulted. I should like the Minister to deal with that point when he is replying, and to say whether the action of the chairman of the company in issuing this document without consulting the trade unions concerned is a breach of the section of the Act.

I do not think the Minister agreed that he was consulted about the pension scheme.

That is why Deputy Larkin asked the question.

The Deputy remembers the Minister's reply.

I do. It reads:—

"I am aware that the Great Southern Railways Company have formulated certain proposals for a pension scheme applicable to their wages staffs, but I have no information as to the interests which may have been consulted in its preparation."

That is very clear.

Surely it is the Minister's duty to see that his nominee, the chairman of the Great Southern Railways Company, will comply with the conditions laid down in Section 55 of the Act of 1924. In reply to a supplementary question later, the Minister stated that he had been supplied with information concerning the matter.

That he had been supplied with a copy of the speech.

Naturally, the Minister for Finance will be doubly interested in this matter. The Minister understands that the chairman of the Great Southern Railways Company, who is the nominee of the Government, would not incur an additional expenditure of £250,000, which has, I am informed, been agreed to already, without consulting both the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Finance, who might have to pay a portion of that for some years after the whole scheme comes into operation. I am suggesting that the chairman of the Great Southern Railways Company, by failing to consult representatives of organised railway workers, has broken in the spirit as well as in the letter the arrangement referred to in Section 55 of the Act of 1924. I do not want to go into the terms of the pension scheme. If the scheme had been discussed in a friendly way, or in any way with recognised representatives of organised railway workers, who knew anything about pension schemes, I am certain they would be in a position to make many suggestions for improvement or for alteration of the terms of this scheme.

I do not want to go into that matter now. I am only hoping that the Minister will exercise his influence at an early date to see, before the scheme is brought into operation, that the recognised representatives of organised railway and transport workers will be consulted. It is proposed to bring it into operation on June 30th of this year. There is another serious matter to which I am sure the Minister would not be a party. There is a qualification and also a disqualification for benefit. At the end of the scheme it states:—

"Should an employee be a member of any society or body, excluding the National Health Insurance Society, as a result of which membership he receives a benefit while out ill he shall be debarred automatically from this scheme".

I assume that it is not the intention of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to debar railway workers of long service membership of the Irish National Foresters or other societies of that kind, into which they have paid over a long period of years for sickness, unemployment, convalescence or other benefits, by the inclusion in a so-called pension scheme of this kind a provision which automatically lapses the benefits they paid for. I do not know what the real intention behind that provision is. It has been suggested that it is included in order to force members of trade unions that provide these benefits out of these unions and to make them rely solely on the miserable benefits provided under the terms of this scheme. I invite the Minister to look carefully into a couple of sections in this scheme that are going seriously to affect several hundred railway workers who are members of benefit societies like the Irish National Foresters, the A.O.H. and other societies of that kind.

Surely, if a railway or transport worker has been paying for a period of 20 or 30 years for certain benefits to societies of the kind to which I have referred, he should not be forced, as a condition of membership of this new scheme, to sign away his rights and lapse his membership and thereby add to the profits of those societies. A certain type of railway official—perhaps the chairman of the Great Southern Railways is one—would like, by a stroke of the pen, to wipe out railway workers' membership of certain amalgamated unions. I was very pleased, therefore, that the Minister gave us an assurance on that point when replying to the debate on the last occasion. I only hope that he will bring that assurance, which is on the records of the House, to the personal notice of the chairman of the company, so that he will carry out his wishes in these matters. I, myself, am a member of an amalgamated union. I have been a member of it since I joined the service and I was one of the founders of the organisation. The 4,000 members of that organisation are entitled to certain social benefits from it. They paid dearly for them. If the railway workers of this country decide, as perhaps they will decide, to set up an Irish railway workers' union, one of the things they should not do is automatically to lapse their membership of the amalgamated unions. I have discussed this matter with some people in the trade union movement, and saw some of the leaders of the amalgamated unions. At one period of the discussions, one of the big amalgamated unions catering for Irish railway workers was willing to hand over so much per head per member as the nucleus of a fund to establish an Irish railway workers' union.

That was a good idea. It was not accepted but that offer is there for railway workers any time they decide to make use of it. One of the things they should not do—the Minister who is a more sensible man than I will agree with me—is automatically to lapse their membership of these unions and make a present of their past subscriptions to big bodies of the type the Minister knows so much about. That is the kind of policy that lies at the back of some of the clauses dealing with this pension scheme. I hope that the Minister will look into those questions between the passing of the present stage and the Committee Stage of this Bill.

It is an extraordinary thing that, under the section I have read out, the operative or regular wages staff who will become eligible for membership of this scheme will not be allowed to receive any more than the small sums stipulated in the scheme when out of work as a result of illness. The clerical staff are granted a minimum of three months' full pay when out of work as a result of illness. Why should not the regular wages staff be entitled to receive, in addition to what is provided here, what they are eligible for in the National Foresters and other bodies of that kind? I urge the Minister to look into this matter between now and the Committee Stage and bring his influence to bear on the chairman of the Great Southern Railways with regard to matters of this kind.

I suggested, when the Minister was out, that a certain section under the title "Pension Scheme" was a definite breach of the conditions laid down in Section 55 of the Act of 1924. I do not expect the Minister to reply to all the points I have made, but I would ask him to say what he thinks about this serious matter. The representatives of the organised railway workers have not been consulted in connection with this scheme, but here is a section which proposes to alter their conditions of employment. That is why I say it is a breach of the section which the Minister definitely told the House operates at present, and will operate after this Bill becomes law. I read out the section, and I should like the Minister to deal with it in his reply.

The members of this group are sincerely anxious—and have given earnest of their anxiety—to help the Government, or any Government in office, to establish a sound transport system. This Bill can be amended—I say this because of the promises of drastic amendments which the Minister himself has made—so as to make it a much better Bill than it is. I am amazed that the Minister, in the time at his disposal, did not have the Bill redrafted and presented as Transport (No. 2) Bill, relating it more clearly than at present to the promises of drastic amendments made previous to and during the general election.

It is my hope, and the hope of Deputies of other Parties, that, when the Bill reaches its final stage, it will be a better Bill than it is now. For the sake of the transport system of the future, when he will have passed out of the office of Minister for Industry and Commerce, I ask the Minister, irrespective of the personalities involved, not to hand over the tremendous powers contained in this Bill to one man. I have no personal prejudice against the present chairman of the Great Southern Railways, but you are handling him a responsibility which would be too heavy for a superman to bear. I hope the Minister will seriously consider that section before it is finally passed.

Like Deputy Davin, I am surprised that the Minister did not take steps to amend the Bill, as more or less promised by him on the Second Reading of No. 1 Bill. In his speech winding up the debate on that Bill, he left me and, I am sure, many other Deputies under the impression that, as a result of the debate, he was prepared to make certain amendments. Therefore, I submit that we have not the Minister's final proposals on transport before us, notwithstanding that the Minister has to-day suggested that the Bill must be taken as representing the Government's complete proposals. If that were so, it would mean that the Minister had changed his mind in the period between the Second Reading, prior to the election, and now. I should like to know why he changed his mind. Is it because he, like Deputy O'Reilly, has come to the conclusion that the people have passed this Bill?

It is true to say that the people have elected a majority of Deputies who were pledged to support the Bill, but it is also true to say that a very large number of people opposed to it were elected, and a very large number of votes were cast against the Bill, and while I am prepared to accept the view that the people, in so far as they knew anything—and I assert that they were not informed at all—did give a mandate to the Government to go through with it, if they did it was on the undertaking given by the Minister in his concluding speech in the debate that he would amend the Bill. Therefore, I hold that the Minister has run away from his undertaking and misled the people who supported him and the Party of which he is a member—he has misled them into giving a mandate which, in my opinion, they would not have given if they were aware of the facts.

I do not know that there is any good purpose to be served in debating the Bill very extensively, but, as I am a certain type of individual, I want to remind the country and the Government that a number of us in our youth had—and some of us still have—very high ideals and we laboured—and a certain amount of success attended our labours—to free this country from foreign domination. I at no time ever believed that I would see the day when the stock exchange would be breathlessly awaiting the result of an election in this country, and that a great number of our people could be influenced by the financial power that is inherent in some Parties.

To say that the bottom fell out of the stock exchange, as far as Great Southern Railways stocks are concerned, when the Government was defeated, would be an exaggeration, but they certainly got a bit of a drop. The very day after the Government Party was returned, and when it was obvious that the Bill would go through, fortunes were made in a moment.

I submit that in view of that fact, if it was for no other reason, the Government would have been well advised to withdraw the Bill, and I take it that that would be one of the reasons why the chairman of the Great Southern Railways Company—a person for whom I have the highest respect—advised the Minister to withdraw the Bill. I would say that before the Government were defeated he saw the influences that were being brought to bear upon the measure that the Government intended, and if the policy or the programme for the economic and material well-being of the people is to be influenced by the tactics of what I might call the stock exchange manipulators, then there is very little difference between politics in this country and politics as known in America in Wall Street, and in London on the stock exchange. We have a higher ideal than that. We should show that we are above that sort of thing. But, apparently, the idea now is that in future it will be possible for financiers to manoeuvre into position and to make and unmake Governments. The only way that can be stopped is by the Government withdrawing the Bill.

I am opposed to the Bill because it is the first step the Government have taken towards organising an industry in the country or an essential public service. I hold that when they are doing that they should not adopt the line of high finance, but it should be organised in accordance with Christian principles and that it should be an outline of what a Christian nation can do. I hold that there is no more relationship between the proposals of the Government—which the Minister to-day says are complete proposals— and Christian principles than there is between black and white.

I do not feel like travelling over the ground that has been covered by other speakers as to the serious defects in the Bill. One of the points about which I am perturbed is that relating to redundancy. Here you have men who have given long service, who have planned their lives upon employment on the railways, and they will find that the company will do the very same as was done under previous legislation—that the men will be kept on and paid until the period arrives under which the redundancy section applies, and then will be just cut adrift without any consideration whatsoever. The Minister says that redundancy will show itself in a very short period.

Immediately.

Deputy McGilligan, when he was Minister, said the same thing, but he was prepared to leave a period of five or six years. Deputy McGilligan found that even the period of five or six years was not sufficient and that an injustice was done to the workers. Surely, the present Minister for Industry and Commerce, having the experience before him that Deputy McGilligan had when his legislation was put through, should have taken steps to ensure that the hardships imposed under the first Act would not again be imposed upon workers. My own opinion—I do not put it as the opinion of the Party—is that the members of the Opposition would be well-advised to let the Government take full responsibility for this Bill. Let them go through with it, because they will find in a very short time, if they have any consciences at all, that they will have to amend this legislation. The Minister, if he was honest with himself, with the railway workers and with the Dáil, should have seen, when he was introducing this Bill for a second time, that it contained the amendments which he considered were essential and would be accepted.

Apparently the Minister expects, when the Bill gets its Second Reading, that the Opposition must take the responsibility of amending it. I have no doubt we will be taunted in the same manner as we were to-day when the statement was thrown at us: "The people passed this Bill." God help the people; they can be blamed for many things, but they have, as has been already said here, in our opinion, made a mistake. We shall try to save them from the consequences of that mistake as far as possible. The Government should do the correct thing by putting up amendments and indicating their actual proposals.

On the financial side of the Bill, it is very hard to get a figure that would represent a fair estimate of the value of the assets of the Great Southern Railways or the Dublin United Transport Company. The item of goodwill is one of the most diabolical ever invented for the purpose of manipulating balance sheets. It can be exterminated or it can be enlarged. Even in this country, under the Fianna Fáil régime, the item of goodwill in certain companies has grown to alarming proportions.

We know it is a fictitious thing, because if a Government change their views on monopolies, then the goodwill is like a blast of smoke—it is gone, but for the purpose of a financial arrangement like this it gives a fictitious value to the property held. I am glad that Deputy Davin asked Deputy O'Reilly to examine that matter because, if he does so, he will certainly realise that a balance sheet which shows assets at slightly over £500,000 and goodwill put down as assets at £1,600,000, is one of the most astonishing things that has ever been noticed in the history of finance, even in the history of companies.

I have before me the stock exchange value of the Great Southern Railways Company as on certain dates. The nominal value in 1938 was £11,574,290. The highest stock exchange value in the same year of all the combined stocks, that is, debenture, guaranteed, preference and ordinary stock, was £8,059,011. In the same year the lowest value on quotation was £4,854,569. That is from page 21 of the Report on Public Transport. In 1939 they dropped to £4,567,000. Surely the value is something between that high figure and that low figure and that would be a reasonable sum to fix. But we do not do that. The Minister is guaranteeing a far higher figure than anything that could be taken on the figures I have quoted.

As I say, that led to the situation that we had people who had gambled on the Stock Exchange waiting with bated breath for the result of the election. They were praying—and paying, I suppose—to see that the people who were going to protect their profits were returned to the Dáil. We are entitled to come to that position; we can do it if we like, but it is certainly not the ideal and it is certainly not a position that any one of us expected would be arrived at as a result of our labours in the past.

This Bill has already been debated at such length that I do not propose to discuss it very extensively this evening. There are some points in connection with it on which I should like to address some remarks. The Minister undertook on the last occasion on which we discussed the Transport Bill to make very radical amendments in the clauses relating to the conditions of employment of railway workers so as to ensure that they would not be exposed to the dangers that were inherent in the Bill as first introduced and as re-introduced on this occasion.

The Minister on that occasion professed himself to be concerned with the maintenance of stable employment in the railway service and undertook to introduce certain amendments in the Bill which would ensure railway workers against redundancy, the danger of which the Minister then thought was much more apparent than real. I want to say to the Minister that if he is genuinely concerned with the maintenance of employment in the railway service, if he wants to see the existing railway workers continued in employment, and if he wants to stabilise their employment in the railway service, there is a very easy method of doing it and a method which will ensure that no injustice can be done to any of these workers. There should not be the slightest difficulty in arranging for the Dublin United Transport Company on the one hand and the Great Southern Railways Company on the other hand to schedule by name all the workers who are in their employment on the date upon which this Bill comes into operation, and it could be provided in the Bill that these people were guaranteed regular employment in the railway company and that their dismissal could only take place on two grounds—for misconduct or because of infirmity of mind or body. In that way the Minister would make sure that the railway personnel would be guaranteed regular employment and would lose that employment only for proven misconduct or inability to continue to perform their duties by reason of infirmity of mind or body.

By resort to a device of that kind the Minister can stabilise railway employment; he can make sure that, whether the redundancy takes place within six months, six years or 16 years, these workers are assured of regular employment in the railway service, as assured of regular employment as are civil servants. They are entitled to no less regular employment and no less stability of employment than is provided for persons in the Civil Service. If in the Gárda service, the Civil Service and local government service the State accepts the principle of regular employment for those recruited, then in a vast national and vital public service such as the railways the Minister ought to accept the same principle and provide for the regular employment of railway workers of all grades subject to the satisfactory performance of their duties from the point of view of efficiency and good health.

No civil servant has that security of employment.

I should like to tell the Minister that not only have civil servants got these guarantees in fact by the practice in the service, but, in addition, they have got them, as the Minister knows, by legislation.

They have not.

I put it to the Minister that if he looks up the Civil Servants (Transferred Officers) Compensation Act of 1929, and gets advice on the matter from his Attorney-General, he will be convinced that every person transferred to the service of this State on the 1st April, 1922, was scheduled as a transferred officer, and in the case of that person his services could be terminated only on two grounds—misconduct, or because of infirmity of mind or body.

That was a condition imposed on us by the British Government, not willingly accepted by the Government here.

I will debate even that with the Minister. When that Act was going through the House no objection was taken to stabilising the employment of civil servants and when we were discussing, in 1932, other legislation which affected that particular Act, the Taoiseach said—and the records are available if the Minister cares to inspect them—that so far as these particular civil servants were concerned it was far better for them to have their rights enshrined in an Irish Act of Parliament, as they were then by the changes made, than to have them resting on an instrument known as the Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland at that time. In fact if the Minister cares again to get legal advice on the matter he will find that the rights of these people rest, so far as our legislation is concerned, on the rights given by an Irish statute. But I am not discussing that aspect of the matter so much as I am discussing the question of stabilising railway employment and I suggest to the Minister that that device is one which could usefully be resorted to in the present circumstances and it is one which is much more calculated to provide stability of employment in the railway service than a measure which provides for compensation on discernible redundancy within a limited period.

No safeguard which the Minister may provide in the latter connection, which has a limited duration, can possibly guarantee the workers against devices which may be resorted to unscrupulously by a railway company concerned, not with providing stable employment on the railways, but with creating a staff situation in which the numbers employed would be considerably attenuated in the interest of earning dividends for the stock investors.

The main principle of the Bill is that we are now setting up a new transport company, and the State is guaranteeing to the new company £16,000,000 in respect of debentures, as well as annual interest at a fixed rate in respect of the stock of the company. The position, therefore, is that this new company can be very badly managed, as the railway companies have been notoriously badly managed in the past, and can lose in the first year £500,000 or £1,000,000 through the same incompetence that brought about the ruin so graphically described by the Minister in his Second Reading speech on the last occasion. It does not matter to the railway shareholders whether the directors lose money the first year, the second year, or the tenth year. The taxpayers of this country, who are finding it hard enough to balance their own budgets, will be called upon by the Government in power to provide dividends for a railway company which is incompetently managed, managed in such an inefficient way as to be incapable of producing dividends on the capital invested in it.

I suggest to the Minister that that provision in this Bill is without precedent as applied to any other undertaking in this country. Here is the State setting out, not merely to guarantee £16,000,000 worth of debentures which must ultimately be liquidated by the new company or the taxpayers, but is setting out as well to guarantee dividends each year to the railway company, even if the railway company makes a substantial loss. There is no incentive to the railway company to make any profit so long as the State is going to prop up the railway company by a guarantee of dividends to the railway stockholders, and these dividends will be passed on, on outrageously generous terms, so far as the stock of the existing companies is concerned.

It would be a good idea if the Deputy read the Bill. He might be able to talk intelligently about it.

The Deputy has read the Bill.

It is not evident from his speech.

Would the Minister indicate where what I have said is any way inaccurate?

It would take me about half an hour.

This Bill provides that the new company or the taxpayers must redeem £16,000,000 worth of debentures.

It does not.

It does so. Of course, the Minister will find another method of dressing that up. If the Minister reads the Bill, he will see that that is one of the essential provisions—that the debentures must be redeemed by the new company or the taxpayers. In the long run, the taxpayer is the guarantor for the £16,000,000 which is to be poured into the new company on the basis of payment of excessively generous compensation to the stockholders in the existing company. There is provision in the Bill for the redemption of the £16,000,000 of debentures, and if the debentures are redeemed out of the earnings of the company—though I think personally that that is an improbability—a situation will then be arrived at in which the owners of the ordinary stock of the company will be the owners of an undertaking which was originally worth £20,000,000. If the company can earn, not merely sufficient to pay dividends, but sufficient to redeem the debentures, the undertaking will be owned in the long run by a group of stockholders who own ordinary stock valued at approximately £4,000,000.

Deputy Davin has quoted the figures in respect to the assets of the Dublin United Transport Company and has shown that these assets are stated to be worth approximately £2,250,000, of which a sum of £1,670,000 is in respect of that nebulous factor known as goodwill. The assets of the Dublin United Transport Company for the purpose of this Bill are being valued with reference to an asset of £1,671,000 as goodwill. In other words, so far as the valuation of the Dublin United Transport Company's assets is concerned, the State is proposing to give to the shareholders of the company £145 worth of shares in the new transport company for every £100 which these shareholders had invested in the present company. It may be true that that is the present stock exchange value of the shares. But it is equally true that, to take the value of these shares at the present time, is to give the shares an unreal and very artificial value indeed. The Dublin United Transport Company have been able to make substantial profits in recent years because of the circumstances, because of the fact that they are providing an inadequate bus service at present, that these buses are carrying, in present circumstances, passengers to a greater density than previously, and because the travelling public to-day, while being charged higher fares than previously, are compelled to travel in conditions in which, in normal circumstances, they would not be required to travel.

It is not unnatural, therefore, that, with the minimum of buses on the road, with these buses packed to their greatest possible capacity, especially at the peak hours, and even to a considerable extent in what might be described as the valley hours, the transport company is able to earn an income to-day which they would not earn in normal circumstances, because the travelling public would not be prepared to accept the present services as normal and efficient services if circumstances were normal.

I say very definitely that, so far as the shareholders of the Great Southern Railways and the Dublin United Transport Company are concerned, they are being paid compensation for their shares based upon an artificial rise in the value of the shares, and that artificial rise is being influenced by the restrictions on other forms of road traffic, and by the restriction even of the services provided by these two companies. If one were to examine the value of the shares of the Great Southern Railways at any time over the ten years from 1933 to 1943, the value of the shares on the stock exchange would be substantially lower than the value which we are assigning to these shares under this Bill. If the value on the stock exchange were applied to the shares of the Dublin United Transport Company over the past ten years, a similar set of circumstances would be found. At one time the shares of the Dublin United Transport Company were as low as 7/6.

At another time they were £2.

For a very short time.

They were 7/6 in the year in which there was a six months' strike.

If the Minister takes the average stock exchange value of these shares for the past ten years, he must realise that their value—and that is a very fair test to apply—would not be £145 for shares which have a par value of £100. I think it will be discovered in time, when this new company is unable to pay dividends, and when the House is being asked to provide some further relief for the new transport undertaking, that the scheme of compensation provided for stockholders in the present transport and railway companies is excessively generous and that that generosity will be the biggest obstacle in the way of the new company from the standpoint of earning dividends and providing a satisfactory service in future.

My approach to this problem is that the House is being offered a private monopoly in transport and it is being asked to give that private monopoly all the possible guarantees which a legislature could be asked to give from the standpoint of safeguarding the capital invested in the transport company. As one can see from the Bill as drafted, a similar solicitude is not shown for the welfare of the 14,000 employees who have dedicated their lives to the railway service. The Legislature is being asked to give every kind of legislative power to safeguard the capital invested in the company, while only a minimum of concern is being extended to the workers, without whom it is not possible to revive the transport industry of this country. What we are offered, as I have said, is a private monopoly, buttressed by every possible power which could be given to it by the State. That is what is being offered to the House now. The whole community is being asked to provide a guarantee of £16,000,000 for the debenture holders and also to guarantee the payment of dividends to stockholders, whether the company makes a profit or not. Faced with a situation of that kind, where the State is pledged to meet £16,000,000 out of a capital of £20,000,000, where the State's resources are pledged to provide guarantees in unprecedented circumstances, namely, that a company can lose on its balance sheet but can still win on its dividends, I would prefer that in circumstances of that kind the State should take the step of purchasing for the whole community the two transport companies and bring them under public ownership and public control—that public ownership and that public control not to be exercised, necessarily, by day-to-day decisions of the Dáil, but administered by a board set up by the State, whose object would be to provide the community with an efficient transport service, properly organised and managed by the State, and which would have only one concern, the provision for the public of a satisfactory, cheap and efficient railway and road transport system generally, instead of being concerned merely with the earning of dividends.

When the Minister said, in 1931, in this House that the Fianna Fáil policy in regard to transport was the municipalisation of the Dublin transport services, and the nationalisation of the railways, I think he was proceeding on sound lines. I think that the policy to which he then professed to have wedded himself was a policy which, had it been adopted then, would have given the country a much more satisfactory transport system during the intervening years than the incompetently and inefficiently managed system with which we have had to put up every day since the Minister made that statement in 1931. If we are to pledge the credit of the State to the extent of the issue of debentures valued at £16,000,000, if we are to buttress up capital in the way that is suggested in this Bill, then I think that we should go the whole road and nationalise the railway and transport services, generally, in the public interest and for the purpose of providing the public with what they have never got in this country so far, and that is a cheap, efficient and competently organised and managed transport service.

I agree with what the Minister said yesterday, that an efficient transport system is vital to our agricultural and industrial progress. One cannot visualise any efficient agricultural or industrial development in this country that is not aided by an efficiently organised transport system. Our present transport system is in no sense an efficiently organised transport system, and I hold that we ought to do all that we can to get on the road which will give us an efficiently organised transport system for the future. For the last 22 years, this Legislature has been asked to tinker with the transport services of the country, and at intervals, all through the past 22 years, Bills have been introduced in this House, the primary purpose of which was to try to give another sop to transport systems here, there, or somewhere else, to try to buttress them up and keep in existence incompetent managements. Yet, after 22 years' experience of inefficient and incompetent transport systems run by private enterprise, the State under this Bill is now proposing to continue the same system of private enterprise, with the difference that on this occasion the taxpayers' money is to be provided for the purpose of buttressing up private enterprise and allowing it to continue along the road that it has trodden with absolute impunity for the last 22 years. I do not believe that we should do that. I do not believe that transport in this country, having regard to modern conditions of agricultural and industrial life, should be looked upon merely as a source of dividends and profits for investors. I do not believe, for instance, that ordinary justice would stand for private control of, say, our water supply, or of our roads. I do not believe that justice would stand for private control of our supplies of oxygen. In the same way, I believe that this nation should not stand for a private system of transport, because, after all, transport is just as essential to the nation, on the basis of service, as is the provision of water or roads for our people. I think that transport services in this country, if they are to be satisfactory from a national point of view, must be based fundamentally on the provision of service to transport users, and that such a vital service should not be placed on the basis of earning profits for those who invest moneys in it.

At one time, transport was a matter for the investment of money with a view to earning profits, but in the circumstances of modern life, and with the change in the character of transport that has taken place, I think that the general tendency of public opinion is to recognise that services such as transport, which are vital to the national life, should be brought under public control and should cease to be sources of earning dividends for investors. I believe that in our present circumstances the nationalisation of our transport system would be in the best interests of the whole community. I believe that private enterprise, so far as it has been applicable to transport for the last 22 years, is not such as ought to commend itself to this House as a vehicle for carrying on all our transport services in the future. The public, I think, have a right to expect that if their money and credit are to be pledged to a new transport undertaking that money and that credit ought to be pledged only to a transport service that will be operated in the interests of the community as a whole, and not in the interests of people who are concerned, in the main, in the earning of dividends.

It is quite clear that the Government have now abandoned the promise made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in 1931, when he said that Fianna Fáil believed in the nationalisation of the railway services. This Bill means that that promise is being torn up, that we are not going to have nationalisation now, and that, instead, we are to have a private monopoly which will have at its disposal the money-bags of the nation and which will be able to use the State's credit and money for the purpose of paying dividends when the company itself is not capable of paying them under normal trading conditions. The Minister has suggested that this piece of legislation is to be the end of Government transport legislation. I suggest that it will not be the end of transport legislation, any more than the Act of 1924 was the end of the then existing transport legislation.

It will not be many years until there is another Transport Bill in this House. I suggest that that Transport Bill will be doing for the transport system in this country what this and previous Transport Bills have been doing, namely, trying to buttress up a privately-owned and incompetently directed transport service, when we should instead be proceeding to take steps to inaugurate a nationally-owned transport system operated by means of a public utility. Even if we had a loss on the operation of a service of that kind, we could know that the service was at least being operated in the interests of the whole community, that the loss was shared on behalf of the whole community, that it was not a loss, such as we shall have under this Bill, incurred purely from the standpoint of maintaining the stock exchange value of the shares and providing dividends for those who are concerned with the railway service merely from the point of view of its yield in dividends and not from the point of view of the provision of an efficient service for the community.

I shall be as brief as possible in dealing with this measure because I think it was discussed at very great length last month and a considerable amount of time has been given to it already in this Dáil. I should like at the outset to question a remark which has been made from the opposite benches to the effect that whatever the Dáil may think, this particular Bill has been passed by the people. In my opinion it is entirely futile for a Deputy or any group of Deputies to argue nowadays on what or what has not been the issue at the general election. I campaigned during the election the same as any other Deputy. I travelled perhaps more of the country than many of them. My constituency was subject to more frequent Ministerial invasions than most constituencies, and few of the nervous people in that constituency slept the night following these invasions because the issue that was clearly, plainly and bluntly put to the people was the horrors that would come upon the country if the office holder of the Department of External Affairs was changed. Neutrality, safety, fear, bombs—these were the issues.

That is not the issue in this debate. If the Deputy wants to fight the election over again, we are quite willing.

The Deputy is always prepared and gladly accepts the challenge to fight an election. The one member of the Government who referred in my constituency to the Transport Bill was the Minister opposite, and he referred to the pensions scheme rather than to the Bill as a whole. He saw the hoardings from here to Cork and Donegal. Was there a single poster asking the people to vote for the Transport Bill? "Do not change the man at the helm; think of your safety; safeguard the nation; protect the mothers in the homes." But was there one poster asking the people to support the Transport Bill? Not one, from here to Cork or from here to Donegal. In view of that, it is absolute nonsense for anyone to claim that this Bill was submitted to, and approved of, by the people. As to the question of the tactics adopted by members of the Government—front, middle and back benches —their honesty may be entirely questionable, but the success achieved goes without question, and the sound commonsense of every candidate in refusing to refer in a public way to this Bill, in having any literature dealing with this Bill and in submerging the Bill in an entirely unreal——

Where did the Deputy fight the election at all? Was he in Ireland? Whom does he think he is fooling?

I have listened to the Minister in my constituency with the same amount of amazement as I listened to him here because the degree of brass which can be produced by the Minister—well, I believe an elephant would blush but the Minister is incapable of doing that. When I discussed the Bill last month my main opposition to the Bill was based on the view that it was entirely improper to bring this Bill before the House until we knew whether there was a grave public scandal associated with the finances of the measure or not. That view I held strongly then. I still hold that view and no explanation has been given either here or outside, as to why it is imperative to get this Bill through the Dáil before we know whether there is an amount of corruption associated with the finances or not. If the Minister had any prospect of ever getting support for this Bill outside his own Party, surely he would have a chance of getting better support for the measure if the minds of Deputies were satisfied that there was no financial uncleanliness associated with the events that led up to this Bill? There is a tribunal sitting inquiring into that and all I can say is that the evidence which has so far appeared——

I submit, Sir, that this matter is out of order and that it is most unfair to take advantage of your presence in the Chair to raise it.

I think it is most unfair to the Minister to suggest that I am taking advantage of the present occupant of the Chair.

The Deputy knows it is out of order.

Acting-Chairman (Mr. O'Reilly)

It is highly improper to discuss what is not in this measure.

Do not let the Minister frighten you.

What I said in the last few moments I said in the presence of the Ceann Comhairle on a previous occasion. In introducing my observations, I stated that I was repeating views expressed by me last month and that expression of opinion was called for by the statement made that the people had ruled on this particular matter. I am entitled to say that whatever uneasiness with regard to the financial side of this Bill Deputies felt last May has been intensified by the evidence that appeared in the newspapers since. With regard to the Bill itself, it is entirely unreasonable and untimely that a Bill of this kind dealing with the whole transport system of the country should be introduced at a moment which can be referred to as the most abnormal in our history from a transport point of view. We have no normal conditions existing from which to draw a line on which to base our opinion or on which to evaluate the success or failure of the management of the company, a management which, presumably, we are going to perpetuate in a very significant and exaggerated manner under this Bill.

The Minister in order to pay a tribute to the present management which as far as I know may be the most efficient in the world—I am not familiar with the individual concerned; I do not know whether he is highly efficient or thoroughly inefficient—pointed to the financial success of the railway company in recent years as compared with previous years. I never listened to a more misleading statement from a Ministerial bench. Anyone who reads the Transport Tribunal Report of 1939 will see in that report that every witness, from whatever department or walk in life he came, joined in saying that the railway companies were going downhill because of competition from the roads—because of the private car, the private lorry and the commercial lorry—and that the slump in, and approaching bankruptcy of, the the railway concerns were due to that competition from the roads.

Through the war, through the shortage of fuel, through emergency regulations, through one cause or another, 90 to 99 per cent. of the private cars were put off the road and that gigantic element of competition was removed. Through emergency Orders, through various restrictions arising out of the fuel shortage, a great bulk of the commercial lorries, privately owned, were put off the roads. Restrictions were imposed on the lorry carrying for hire and the biggest restriction of all was the shortage of petrol. In other words, all competition was removed and the only factors which the Transport Tribunal reported as militating against a soaring railway financial position were completely removed. In these circumstances, I hold that the most inefficient and inexperienced boob who ever lived would have made a success of the railway company, and if the Minister wishes the Dáil to pass a Bill giving absolute power to an individual and wiping completely off the map, so far as having any authority is concerned, the representatives of the shareholders he will have to make a better case than he has made so far. That case, in my opinion, was entirely misleading and was not fair to the Dáil.

There is another objection I have to this Bill. When that Transport Tribunal sat the railwaymen came before the tribunal and naturally they talked as big as ever they could. They were looking for money from the State and they bolstered up their case to the greatest extent possible. They asked for £2,000,000 to put the railway company on its feet, to replace the decrepit stock, to repair the permanent way. That sum of £2,000,000 was reduced, on the recommendation of the majority of the tribunal, but when they were looking for that money, these men told the tribunal exactly what they wanted it for—how much for omnibuses, how much to buy out rights, how much for repairs, how much for reserves, etc.—under nine, ten or 15 headings.

Nothing for goodwill.

Here we have a demand behind which we are asked to place the public credit, the taxpayers' money, the credit of the State, to the extent of £16,000,000 or £20,000,000. Although the Minister spoke at great length last month and this month, and although he claims to have campaigned the country on this Bill, did he ever make any attempt, here or outside, to take either Deputies or the public into his confidence, as to what this money is required for? There are not "yes-men" on all benches in this House, and, Deputies before they vote away the public credit or the taxpayers' money, are entitled to ask for what purpose it is required. They are entitled to ask: "For what is this £1,000 or that £1,000,000 required? How is it to be expended? What is to be purchased with it?" Is it that there is not enough work inside the Minister, the railway company and his Department to prepare such figures and submit them to the Dáil, or is it that there is too much cunning in some of these Departments to take the Dáil into their confidence?

When the credit of the State was being pledged some years ago for the Shannon scheme, and when the Dáil was asked to back that scheme through the credit of the State to the extent of £5,000,000, long before any Bill was introduced, a report by the experts, together with the views of the Department, was submitted to every Deputy in Dáil Eireann. They were given that report months before the Bill came and the proposed expenditure of every single £5 note was set out, so that Deputies could come in here, and, having pledged the public credit by their votes, could go home to any taxpayer, to any one of their constituents, and say: "That is what we pledged the money for—for a great hydro-electric scheme—and this is how the money is to be spent: so much for wages, so much for embankments, so much for poles, wires, machinery, oil and fuel". Every little item was accounted for.

Here we have a demand for millions and we are not told how £100 is to be spent. All we know is that the railway company was approaching bankruptcy and something had to be done. That something is being done, and, when the money is voted, there will be no board of directors who will have a say in its expenditure and there will be no board of directors, the majority of whom have to be persuaded that the money is being sensibly expended. There will be one removable individual with absolute power to defy the whole board and to spend millions against the advice of men who should have considerable experience of railway management. That one individual is to be a removable agent—removable at the pleasure of the Minister. I dislike subscribing, through Parliament, to any individual holding a highly-paid and highly-responsible post at the whim and pleasure and beck of any Minister, no matter what Government sits in Government Benches. I think it is a wholly unsound type of principle to adopt. It is a principle which is as unfair to the individual as it is unfair to the Ministry concerned. The individual will always be open to the charge that because he is removable, because he exists at the pleasure of the Minister, certain grave steps were taken. It is a principle which, in itself, is unsound and a principle which, even applied to small things, should be avoided. It is a principle which should particularly be avoided when applied to one of the great arteries of the body of the country.

I do not know why the Minister has a board of directors at all. Outside of the board of directors there is another paid board, the advisory board, and the advisory board again are the nominees of the Minister, the paid nominees of the Minister. You have a number of directors paid by the company. Let us see in practice the kind of bedlam that we are instituting at a cost of millions of pounds possibly of public money, the taxpayers' money. We are going to have the transport system in this country managed in this particular way: we are going, first of all, to ensure that there are millions of pounds available, that the management will be elbow-deep in a pool of money. We are not to be told how a sixpence of that is to be spent, but we are told how it is to be controlled. How is it to be controlled? By an individual sitting on a pedestal, nominated by the Minister, and sitting on a pedestal until the Minister pleases to brush him aside. At the base of the pedestal you have six chairs on which the representatives of the stockholders sit, the directors of the company. When it comes to a proposal, when it comes to the expenditure of money, that individual may sit alone or he may sit in conjunction with them, but they cannot sit without him, and, if the whole six of them think the proposal is thoroughly unsound, their views do not count for a snap of the fingers; the views of the one on the pedestal count.

Would the Deputy read the Bill? That is utter nonsense.

It is correct.

Will the Minister either keep silent or leave the Chamber? I am expressing my views and I am entitled to do it.

Not to talk nonsense.

There is one man on top of the pedestal and the views of the other six do not matter. Is not that correct?

No, and it is not in the Bill. If the Deputy will read the Bill, he will not find it.

This is in the Bill. He can arrive at a decision without the others. The decision of the others does not hold unless he agrees with it. The Minister can be as brazen as he likes; he may quibble all he can, but when we are dealing with public money and when we are dealing with people's livelihoods let him at least be open and frank. That is the position; the one man makes a decision, and, if the others do not agree with him, they do not count.

Would the Deputy read the section of the Bill which says so?

The Minister then has another tribunal, a tribunal of nominees of the Government, paid by the Government. Let us take this position, that the directors hold one view and the advisers another. What voice has railway experience there? What safeguard is there for public money in such a scheme? If ever a scheme was evolved to create friction, to create controversy and to breed doubt, it is the lunatic proposals contained in this Bill for the management of the new company. We established a tribunal some years ago to go into this whole question of transport. It was composed of men of experience, men of vast experience, men with intense knowledge of transport, intermixed with men with great knowledge of finance. The tramway company and the railway company came under review, and from beginning to end, either in a majority report or in a minority report, no suggestion was made that the tramway company of Dublin should be merged in order to bolster up the railway company. This Bill shows a kind of craven desire to be over-generous with the big and the few, and to despise entirely the interests of the small and the many. Every safeguard, the most ample that could be designed by legislation— safeguards which can only be called the most over-generous that ever were made from a Government Front Bench —is there with regard to high officers, with regard to the big stockholders. Where is the consideration in this Bill for the ordinary little man who travels by train or by bus or by tram?

How is the double income to be made up? The chairman of the company, in one speech some 12 months ago, indicated that the company could not be financially prosperous when it was carrying the weight of wage-earners that were there at that time. The profits may be increased, to meet the new demands, by wholesale dismissals. The profits may be increased to meet the double demand by doubling the rates, the rates for goods, the rates for passengers, to a big extent, in the absence of all competition. Profits were made last year by vastly increasing the rates. In war years, when apparently the sky is the ceiling for prices, that kind of thing can be tolerated, and increased charges and increased rates do not bother the community very much, because they are merely piled on to prices; but in the years before us, when we are faced with falling prices, when we are faced with shrinking markets, how are the present rates to be borne? Does not the Minister, if he looks into the future at all, see a future in which rates will have to be reduced. If rates have to be drastically reduced, if private cars are to go back on the roads, if the verbal pledges given with regard to lorries plying for hire are to be honoured, if prices are to slump, and if new men are to be disemployed, how then does he propose to double the standard income? How then does he propose to honour the debentures? How then does he propose to pay off the capital? When he looks into the future, does he not see that there was every reason for his colleague, the Minister for Finance, in his Budget speech expressing fears and anxiety with regard to the commitments the State is undertaking in this Bill?

I hold—I think every free Deputy in this House will agree with me—that money should not be voted in this reckless manner until we get the whole story from the Government Benches; until we are told how it is proposed to expend the money; until each section of the millions asked for is segregated under a multiplicity of headings. After that has been circulated, and has been thoroughly examined, and questions have been put under each of those headings, then and only then is it fair to ask Deputies, as representatives of the people, as representatives of the taxpayers, to pledge public money behind a scheme such as this. I think that whatever little respect and regard may be left in the public mind for this institution, that none at all will remain if Deputies are to vote away, and stake, the public credit without getting full details and a comprehensive explanation as to how it is proposed to expend this money.

On a previous occasion I pointed out that, in my opinion, this Bill was a step towards nationalisation. I have not changed my mind since. I welcome the Bill. Let me take the position of railway employees. In my constituency, at the present time, the branch lines are closed down, and there is no compensation for the workers. Many of the railwaymen in the area are in the position that they are living from week to week not knowing but that in the following week they will receive a notice similar to that which the railway workers on the Shillelagh line have received. Under this Bill there will be more contentment and security of employment for workers and better facilities for the travelling public. These are two matters that require consideration from Deputies. There is no use talking about guarantees and the stock exchange. The people of the country heard enough about that during the past month, and have given their answer. My concern is for the men who have nothing to rely on but their weekly wage, and if I am convinced, as I am, that they are going to be assured of that weekly wage then I am going to support this Bill which gives them that guarantee.

We all know that in the past the railway company was practically in a bankrupt condition. It required Government action to remedy the state of affairs that prevailed. When this Bill came originally before the House we were attacked both here and outside. False propaganda was carried on against our union. A similar line of propaganda was employed against the chairman of the company. I have no connection, good, bad or indifferent with the railway system. I have not a relative who is receiving a day's pay either from the railway company or the tramway company. I have, however, this information from the organised tramway workers, that a more sympathetic employer or general manager they have never experienced. The proof of that is that they have the best trade union conditions that obtain in any tramway undertaking in Europe. I am confident, therefore, that the organised workers in the railway industry will receive similar benefits, treatment and sympathy from the general manager of the new company. I think it is only right, since this gentleman's name has been mentioned in the House and since he has been attacked outside, that I should say that. As I have said, I have no connection good, bad or indifferent with the railways. I speak here as one representing organised workers. I have had letters from organised workers in the tramway company, and if any Deputy has doubts about the statements that I have made as to the generous treatment which they are receiving at the present time through the general manager, then let him make inquiries from those organised workers. One man informed me of certain action that was taken against himself. He made his appeal to the general manager, and he told me that the latter was over-generous with him. If that man has been such a success in the tramway company, and if the workers in it have such faith in him, surely to goodness, if he is appointed to this very important position in the new company the railway workers will receive similar treatment from him.

The railway workers will also be in the position to improve their pension scheme by negotiation. I am not out for dividing unions. It was mentioned here that certain men went among the organised workers. Have they not the right to put their views before workers as regards their organisation? Certain Deputies in this House went down to my constituency and tried to divide the organised workers in the union which I represent. Some Deputies complain because certain other organisations go among the organised workers and point out to them certain benefits that are to be got in their organisation. Those Deputies cannot have it both ways. They cannot condemn one man for putting the benefits of his organisation before organised workers while guilty themselves of aiding and abetting and bringing down men to disorganise workers in other unions. With regard to the pensions scheme, the Minister promised on the Second Reading, and I accept his promise, that he would be prepared to receive any reasonable amendments. On that undertaking I am prepared to accept the principle of the Bill.

The passing of this Bill will help to remove the fears that exist amongst a section of railway workers at the present time. I propose to submit amendments to the Bill on Committee. If the Minister will not accept those which I consider necessary for the benefit and protection of the workers, I may have to vote against him.

There is one thing we must recognise, and that is that no voluntary scheme, and no appeals to the people, could get the tramway company and the railway company to come together. We have heard the statement made here that the tramway company is a very wealthy company, and that, therefore, it should not be interfered with. But it has always been the policy of the people, as well as of Governments, that the strong should help the weak. Why, therefore, should we not have an amalgamation of transport companies, and not have one pulling against the other? Is it not much better that they should amalgamate for the benefit of the State and of their employees? I believe that this Bill is a step in that direction. I am in favour of nationalisation, but as I am not able to secure it I am prepared to accept this Bill which is a step in that direction. The Government say they are not in favour of nationalisation. I am supporting this Bill in the interests of the workers concerned because it is the next best thing. A lot of red herrings have been dragged into the discussion on this Bill. My only concern is as to whether this Bill is going to be of benefit to the country and to the workers engaged in the industry. I believe that it is and for that reason I am supporting it.

The last speaker referred to the wages paid by the railway company. I would ask the Minister to bear in mind a question that was asked here some time ago about the wages paid to lock-keepers. I understand that the railway company control lock-keepers' conditions.

The conditions of lock-keepers do not arise on this measure. The canals are not being taken over.

I did not think so either, but I understand that the lock-keepers are controlled by the railways, and that when a question was asked about their wages they were told that the unions concerned had power to ask for an increase from the railways.

There is nothing about the wages of lock-keepers in this Bill.

The railway system, in some cases, takes in the canals, and the lock-keepers are paid 30/- and 35/- a week.

They do not arise here.

I did not think so.

I am positive that they do not; so we are agreed on that point.

I am told that is so.

They do not come within the scope of this Bill.

I agree. I am reminded that it is the railway union that has the power to ask. I want to ask about their wages which are only 32/- per week.

It does not arise.

However, I want to draw attention to the fact——

The Deputy will resume his seat.

I will go on to another point. Why should I resume my seat?

For defying the Chair. I have told the Deputy several times that the matter is not in order.

I was not even cautioned. I claim the same right as Deputy Dillon, Deputy McGilligan or Deputy Costello.

The Deputy will sit down.

I think it is most unfair.

The Minister to conclude.

I think it is most unfair. I protest against your ruling.

The speech which we have heard from Deputy O'Higgins was typical of what we have come to expect from him. I want to apologise to the members of my own Party for trying to deter him from proceeding on the line he has taken. It was rigid adherence to that line, to that false conception of political tactics, that reduced his Party at every election in recent years; and far be it from me to prevent Deputy O'Higgins from continuing his destructive work in that quarter. I am sure even the members of his own Party were astonished to learn that, in the recent election campaign, not merely was this Transport Bill not an issue but that it was not referred to and that no literature concerning it was printed. I am quite certain—whether any Deputies of any Party in the House believe the assertions of Dr. O'Higgins in that regard or not—that it was obvious to those who read the Bill that the particular Bill to which the Deputy referred was not an issue of the election and is not before the House now. Certainly, I was unable to recognise this Bill from the reference made to it by him and I should strongly suggest to the members of the Fine Gael Party that they will find eventually that a little intellectual honesty will help their prospects better than deliberate misrepresentation of the kind which we have just had so efficiently demonstrated by Deputy O'Higgins.

We had a somewhat similar type of speech from Deputy Norton. The speeches of those two Deputies stand out in marked contrast to those made by other members of their Parties, who did endeavour to deal with the Bill and to criticise its provisions in a constructive manner. There is a proposition here—a proposition which the Government believes to be a good one. It is worth considering on its merits. We cannot have it considered on its merits if we are not agreed as to what it is. I think it should be possible, at least, to agree on the printed word, that it does not say what Deputy O'Higgins maintains it does say and that it is not going to do the things which Deputy Norton alleges it will do.

In so far as it has been possible to bring out of this debate a clash of principles, it revolves around the desirability of nationalising the transport services of the country in a different manner from that proposed in the Bill. I used that phraseology deliberately because the Bill does propose the establishment of nationalised public transport services. It is not the type of nationalisation that Deputies had in mind when using that term previously. There are many different methods by which nationalisation could be achieved. Deputy Dwyer proposed that we should run the transport services through a Government Department, as the Post Office is run. Other Deputies contemplated the establishment of an organisation like the Electricity Supply Board—an organisation which would be set up by the Government, financed by the Government and whose directors would be appointed by the Government to run public transport services. Some others conceived a public company, similar to the Irish Sugar Company or the Great Southern Railways, with this difference—that all the vote-carrying shares would be held by the Minister for Finance and, consequently, the directors would be appointed by him.

If we had adopted any one of those three courses, Deputies would say it was nationalisation. When this Bill was introduced first, it was greeted or denounced by the Press as a scheme for the nationalisation of public transport. It does that, in fact, although we endeavoured to ensure that some of the disadvantages which we saw in direct nationalisation would be avoided. I spoke of what those disadvantages were on the previous occasion when the Bill was under discussion, and I do not propose to reiterate what I said then. It is inconceivable that, in the circumstances of this country, the operation of public transport services by a Government Department or an organisation completely subject to Government control, would not become a major issue in internal politics. Inevitably, nationalisation means the introduction of Party politics in the direction of the transport services and a reaction, on that account, on their efficiency, as well as on the liberty of action of Deputies in relation to matters of public policy affecting transport.

I said here before that, if we had nationalised transport services, in every constituency Deputies would be made or unmade on issues such as the construction of branch lines, provision of additional services and reduction or increase of rates of charges. We think that is undesirable. We think it is possible to get the benefits of nationally controlled and centrally directed transport services, without having them made a direct issue in internal politics to that extent. Similarly, we reject the idea of State control of the public transport services of the kind suggested by some Deputies, because we believe they would inevitably be subsidised out of public funds, that the payment of subsidies would become inevitable. We do not believe in subsidised transport services. I tried to explain on a previous occasion what I mean by that. By subsidised transport services, I mean transport services sold at rates insufficient to cover the cost of providing them. We contemplate that the transport services to be provided by Córas Iompair Éireann—the new organisation to be set up by this Bill —will be sold at economic rates. We do not believe in subsidising public transport, as we believe that would inevitably mean inefficient public transport and, in the long run, costly transport to the country as a whole. When one considers the reaction of transport charges on national development, one must regard, not merely the rates in force at any particular time, but the relation which those rates bear to the additional provision which may have to be made by the taxpayers to enable those rates to be maintained below their economic level.

Deputies have referred to this Bill as establishing a private monopoly in transport. That is nonsense. Other Deputies referred to the proposal that there should be a common stock in this company, held by private individuals, as conferring upon those private individuals ownership of this new company. That is true only in theory. In practice, the private stock owners come into this scheme of organisation only as a device for selecting a board of directors independent of the Government. That is the sole function of ownership they can exercise.

The suggestion that this Bill establishes a private monopoly in transport is conveying the idea that certain private individuals will be able to exercise, in relation to public transport services, the same rights of ownership as I can exercise in relation to my house, or another individual can exercise in relation to his business. He can alter the nature of his business, increase—in normal times—his charges for service, he can go out of business or expand it, as he thinks fit. The owners of this company, in so far as the common stock holders can be described as owners, will have no function whatever in the management of the company, no power to alter the services that it provides, no power to alter the transport charges, no power to interfere in the running of the undertaking and no function except the selection of the shareholders' directors.

The function that they completely failed in, in the past.

I want to deal with that. We believe in this system of having shareholders' directors not appointed by the Government. In the past in the case of other organisations set up by the Government under Statute to discharge particular economic functions we placed ourselves in the position by one means or another in which the obligation was imposed upon us of nominating all the shareholders. That applied with regard to the Agricultural Credit Corporation, the Tourist Board, the Industrial Credit Corporation, the Industrial Alcohol Company and a whole range of organisations set up for one purpose or another. I have nothing to say, and I desire to say nothing, which would be regarded as casting a reflection upon any individual on any of these boards, but in practice we have found that Government nominee directors, who attained office because of the Government nomination, and who will be re-appointed at the end of their term of office solely if they have retained the confidence of the Government, who have no personal interest in the financial success of the enterprise, no responsibility to anybody except the Government, for ensuring efficiency and economy in operation, are not the best type of directors. We think it is possible to combine the principle upon which private enterprise functions with the principle of public control in the manner proposed here, and to get a better type of organisation than anything we have yet developed.

In the management of this new company there will be, no doubt, a clash of interests between representatives of the private shareholders and representatives of public policy. Because we contemplate that clash of interest we give to the representatives of public policy certain powers. These powers are intended to ensure that if that clash should, in fact, develop, public policy will dominate over the private interests of shareholders. This power may, in fact, never be enforced. Deputies who object to these powers being given, must contemplate a situation in which either the interests of the common stockholders through their directors will predominate, or the idea of associating stockholders' directors with the direction of the company must be abandoned. We provide, not that the Government nominated chairman can impose his will on the board of the company, but that the company cannot effect a decision on policy in which he does not concur.

If he meets alone does not his decision stand?

The chairman cannot meet alone unless the other directors refuse to attend. Amongst the various possibilities contemplated in the event of a clash between the shareholders' directors and the Government representative, we foresaw the possibility that the stockholders' directors might make the whole management of the company impossible by refusing to attend a meeting of the board. Do we just leave it like that? Do we agree that if the stockholders' directors do not attend there can be no meeting of the board? Against that remote possibility we provide that if the stockholders' directors refuse to attend meetings then the chairman constitutes the board. That is not likely to happen, but when we are passing an Act dealing with long-term arrangements we must provide for everything. The powers we give to the chairman are limited, when we remember that the aim of the Government, and I expect the aim of the Dáil, is to ensure that where a clash happens between considerations of public policy and the interests of the stockholders, it is public policy must come out on top. If we had a completely nominated board we could avoid the necessity of putting a provision of that kind into the Bill, because the Government, in such circumstances, could exercise its right to retire members that were adopting, in its view, a wrong policy. Where we have, as we propose, directors who will be independent of the Government, who will not be nominated by the Government, and not dependent on the Government for renomination when their time expires, who will have responsibility to the body of people that appointed them, responsibility to ensure that the concern is efficiently and economically managed, and that there is no waste of revenue which might be availed of to pay dividends on stock, then, it is necessary to have some general provision of this kind.

Deputy Dwyer said that the main fault of the Bill was that I did not provide in it for the retirement of all the existing directors. Opinions may differ on the capacity of some of the individuals who are directors of the Great Southern Railways Company and the Dublin United Transport Company, but I am quite sure that we would also have differences of opinion on the capacity of any board or of any member that the Government might choose, or that the Dáil might choose. We would not have unanimity on the nomination of what we would regard as the ideal board. We propose to leave the nomination of shareholders' directors to shareholders and if those appointed are competent to safeguard their interests they will be acting wisely; if not they will be acting unwisely.

Why are they given six out of seven?

I said that I did not regard it as a matter of principle whether the Government representatives on the board should be confined to one or more members. I added to that the qualification that I could not contemplate giving the substantial powers set out in Section 31 of the Bill to more than one person. Quite clearly if these powers are to be given they must be given to one person. You could not have two people exercising the same powers. That would not lead to efficient management. If there is the view that the Government should have a second representative on the board, we can discuss it. I would argue against any such amendment in favour of the proposal in the Bill. It is not a provision upon which my mind is finally made up if the Dáil wishes to discuss it. Deputy Mulcahy said that we proposed in the Bill to impose too heavy a burden on the new organisation, a burden that could not be effectively carried except by increasing substantially the cost of transport to the public or by effecting very drastic economies at the expense of its employees. I take it that the Deputy referred to the section in the Bill which imposes on the company the obligation of redeeming for cash the substituted debenture stock before 1960. Deputy Norton misunderstood that provision but as he misunderstood so many provisions I could not attempt to put him right in all respects.

The Bill does contemplate that the debenture stock issued in substitution for existing Great Southern Railways stock will be redeemed for cash in 1960. It is entirely wrong to assume, as Deputy McGilligan assumed in the Parliamentary Question he asked some time ago, and to which many Deputies referred to-day, that the redemption of the substituted debenture stock will be effected by the device of voting an annual amount to the redemption fund. That would be an entirely uneconomic method of effecting the redemption. It would be a foolish procedure. There are many alternatives by which the obligations of the company could be discharged. I am quite prepared to discuss whether that obligation should rest on the company or not. It seems to me that we can deal with that part of the scheme in one of three ways. We can extend the redemption date beyond 1960 and thus give the company a longer time in which to effect the liquidation of that capital liability. We can provide in the Bill that the company, in 1960, may issue, if necessary, new debentures wherewith to get the cash to redeem the substituted debentures. Or we can leave the Bill as it is. One of the advantages of leaving the Bill as it is would be that if the company did not, in fact, succeed in discharging that capital liability by 1960, the matter would have to come again before the Dáil. I do not intend that the company should, in fact, make such charges for transport as would be unreasonable or deter the economic development of the country in order to effect that redemption of the substituted debenture stock. If the company, while providing a cheap transport service and adequate transport facilities, finds that it cannot do what we think it can do—effect redemption of the substituted debenture stock before 1960—the matter can be brought before the Dáil and we can decide then whether any reorganisation of the scheme is desirable or whether it is merely necessary to extend the period. I should like to have an opportunity of discussing that point more fully with the Dáil in Committee, because it seems to me that, even if we proceed upon the pessimistic assumption which many Deputies make, that the company could not possibly discharge that liability within the period, then there is still an argument in favour of leaving the Bill as it is——

What is the necessity for redemption?

The aim is to effect a diminution of the capital liabilities of the company. I shall not say that these capital liabilities are not represented by real assets. They are represented by assets which will have to be replaced if we are to develop the efficient type of transport organisation we desire. To effect the replacement of those assets, new capital expenditure will be necessary and, in order to prevent an undue capital burden from being placed on the transport service of the country, we consider it desirable that, simultaneously with the expenditure of new capital to create new assets, capital represented by old assets should be redeemed out of revenue. We believe it will be possible to do so. It is true that, in the years immediately following the establishment of the new organisation, the charges upon the revenue of the company will be higher than they ultimately will be and that, at some subsequent date, it will be possible for the organisation to devote a higher proportion of its revenue to reduction of fares or improvement of services to the public.

Then it is another form of reserve?

It is another form of reserve, if the Deputy likes to put it that way. The Electricity Supply Board was obliged by the statute which established it not merely to provide for establishment of a depreciation fund but also to provide for amortisation of its capital. That particular provision was criticised by myself, amongst others, as being an unduly conservative form of finance, imposing upon electricity consumers of the present time an obligation to pay more for their electricity for the benefit of the electricity consumers of the future. Whether those arguments were or were not valid in relation to the Electricity Supply Board, we think that, in the case of a transport service, that type of finance, even though less rigidly applied than was contemplated under the Electricity Act, is advisable because it does ensure that the organisation will be kept fully efficient and that, at all times, the management of the company will keep before their minds the obligation to get rid of capital liabilities rather than proceed as the old organisation did—to accumulate new capital liabilities as difficulties arose until they reached a stage at which nobody would lend them any more money no matter what security they offered.

I want Deputies to understand precisely what the prospects are. This new company will have obligations in respect of debenture interest from the moment it is constituted. Debenture stock will be issued to the existing debenture holders and some of the stockholders of the Great Southern Railways Company and to the stockholders of the Dublin United Transport Company, in accordance with the scheme contained in the Bill. This debenture stock will carry interest at the rate of 3 per cent. The company will, therefore, be required to find £296,000 every year out of revenue to pay that interest. If it wants, in addition, to pay interest on the common stock, it will have to find £35,000 for every 1 per cent. paid on the common stock, the maximum dividend in the case of the common stock being 6 per cent. I gave those figures in my introductory speech—£296,000 to provide interest upon the debentures and £35,000 to provide 1 per cent. on the common stock; total £331,000. As I told the Dáil, the lowest net revenue of the two amalgamated companies in their worst year amounted to £440,000. Even if we assume that there can be no improvement in the revenue position of the company following upon better management and re-equipment of the organisation, there is no reasonable likelihood that the company will be unable to meet its debenture interest. It is true that the Great Southern Railways Company is contemplating undertaking obligations in respect of pensions to its employees and certain other benefits which will involve an annual expenditure of £250,000, which is only offset to the extent of £50,000 by existing payments in respect of ex gratia allowances and will be met only to the extent of £25,000 or £30,000 by contributions from the staff. That substantial new charge on the revenue of the company must be taken into account because it will, of course, be payable in priority to dividends upon the common stock. Deputies must, however, recognise that the present scheme of the Great Southern Railways Company is a voluntary scheme, just as the scheme of the Dublin United Transport Company is a voluntary scheme. Certain portions of those schemes are conditional on the company every year at its annual meeting voting the money for the purpose. Under the provisions of this Bill, there will be a statutory obligation on Córas Iompair Eireann to have a pension scheme. The actual proposals of the Great Southern Railways Company in relation to its staff provide not only for a pension scheme but for other benefits such as sickness benefit, early retirement benefit, mortality grants and so forth—

Is that a new scheme?

It is to come into operation in August.

Without consultation with the trade union representatives?

The Deputy has a point there and I shall not make any observation on it beyond saying that any statutory obligation of the Great Southern Railways Company under the Act of 1924 can be enforced by action through the courts, if necessary. If it can be shown that the company have a statutory obligation under the terms of that Act to consult with the trade union representatives before bringing this scheme into operation, I do not think they will try to avoid that statutory obligation. If they do try to avoid it, there is still open to the trade unions concerned a course of action to protect their rights.

Does not the Minister admit that they are changing the conditions of employment?

My opinion is merely an individual opinion. Listening to the Deputy's point, it seemed to me that there was something in it but that matter can be examined by the officers of the company. It is an obligation on the company to have regard to the provisions of the 1924 Act, not an obligation of the Government to enforce the provisions of the 1924 Act upon them.

If Deputy Davin had his way, there would be no pension scheme.

The office-boy Minister is commencing to talk.

The company, in fact, earned a net revenue last year of £1,335,000. That represents a substantial increase on the previous year, and some Deputies said that was due to the fact that they could charge what they liked—that in time of war the sky is the limit as to prices and, of course, the company could shove its net revenue as high as it likes by charging what it likes. That is a complete misrepresentation of the position. The company undoubtedly secured, by an Emergency Powers Order, the right to charge increased rates for goods traffic last year. There were no increased passenger rates and the increase in regard to goods traffic came into operation only on July 1st. The increase in rates was responsible for a very small part of the increase in the net revenue. What was the increase of rates? The increase, as I already told the Dáil, in no case brought a single rate above the standard rate prescribed by the Railway Tribunal under the 1924 Act. That Act amalgamated all the existing railway companies into the Great Southern Railways Company. It set up the Railway Tribunal to determine what rates of charge that new company should be obliged to impose in order that it might earn the standard revenue prescribed by the Railway Tribunal.

It was contemplated by the Railway Tribunal that the company should be under obligation to impose its standard charges, but the company was never able to impose the standard charges because the situation deteriorated and they found if they maintained the charges they would not get traffic at all. These standard charges determined by the Railway Tribunal in 1929, the charges which it was contemplated the Great Southern Railways Company would maintain in 1929 and in succeeding years have in no case been exceeded, even by the increase permitted during the war and because of the higher costs of operation resulting from the war. Deputies will understand, therefore, that if the company continues to maintain after the war the rates of charge now in operation and that were increased by an Emergency Powers Order last year, they will be still only charging the same rates as it was contemplated ten years ago the railway company would have to charge in order to operate on an economic basis.

Does that apply to passenger fares?

The increase last year operated only in respect of goods traffic rates.

What about the suspension of return tickets?

The £1,335,000 net revenue last year was due to three causes, first, to a minor extent to the increase in rates; second, to a great extent to increased traffic secured last year as compared with previous years and third, and mainly, to better management. Some Deputies are reluctant to believe that. I know it is impossible to prove absolutely that the management last year was better than it might have been or that there were, in fact, economies in revenue expenditure effected last year which some other management would not have been able to secure. One cannot prove that absolutely. The only proof I could offer would be by comparing the expenditure of the Great Southern Railways Company with the Great Northern, the only enterprise of a comparable kind we have.

Could the Minister give us the rates—the amount of increased revenue?

The gross figure—it is a very interesting figure.

The gross receipts on the Great Southern Railways on goods traffic increased by £360,000 during the whole of last year. The new rates came into operation on the 1st of July. There was a 10 per cent. increase in the volume of the traffic. If the total gross receipts were up by £360,000, a substantial part must be attributable to the increase in the volume of traffic and only a comparatively small part of the increase is attributed to the higher rates. When the gross receipts from goods traffic go up by £360,000 and a large part of that is attributable to increased traffic, it will be seen that the actual increase from the higher rates was only a small part of the £1,335,000.

What would the increased rates bring in over a full year?

I could not say at the moment; one would have to make too many assumptions as to the volume of the traffic and the nature of it.

Based on the 1943 traffic?

I could not say. I was making a comparison between the Great Northern Railway and the Great Southern Railways. In each case the causes of the increased expenditure were the same. Roughly, there were the same increase in wages to staff, in the price of coal and other fuel, and the same charges to be made for taxation, rates and other outgoings. In the case of the Great Northern Railway there was a 13 per cent. increase in net revenue expenditure and there was a 5 per cent. increase in the case of the Great Southern Railways. That is no reflection on the Great Northern Railway, because there was much more room for improvement in the Great Southern Railways. That improvement was effected. Of the total increase in net revenue, £360,000 is to be attributed to better management on the basis of that comparison with the Great Northern Railway. That sum is itself sufficient to pay the whole of the interest for which this company will be liable for all debentures, plus the amount required to provide for 1 per cent. dividend upon the ordinary stock.

It is because we believe there is such scope for improvement in the management of the Great Southern Railways that we are confident that it will be possible for it not merely to carry the interest charges arising out of the debenture issue, not merely the amount necessary to pay for the pensions and benefits which it is contemplated the staff should enjoy, but also to provide for the renewal of its equipment and the replacement of stock which requires replacement, out of revenue, and also, in the course of the next 15 years, to effect a liquidation of the capital liabilities which will enable it, by 1960, to redeem for cash whatever number of these substituted debenture stocks are still in existence. The company can effect redemption at any time in accordance with the provisions of the Bill.

My optimism may not, in the event, prove to be justified. Deputy Norton and some other Deputies spoke as if there were no grounds for optimism at all. Deputy Norton visualises the company not being able to earn enough to pay its debenture interest, although he wanted to saddle it with extraordinary liabilities at the same time. Perhaps time will prove their views to be right. I do not think it will. I think there is ground for optimism, but if it should not prove to be as solid as I think it is, then this obligation imposed on the company under this Bill can be reconsidered at a later date by the Dáil when it is clear that to attempt to hold the company to the letter of the obligation would involve it in maintaining rates for transport at a higher level than we would regard as desirable, having regard to their general economic effect upon the country.

Deputies have spoken about the value of the Great Southern Railways undertaking and of the Dublin United Transport undertaking on a basis which shows an inability to understand precisely what are the difficulties of valuing a transport undertaking. The Dublin United Transport Company, on the assets side of its balance sheet, has got a goodwill item which is 60 per cent. of the value of all its assets. Some Deputies spoke as if this was just a figure that somebody thought of. It is not. What does that item represent? It represents very largely good hard cash paid out by that company to buy out competitors and to secure a position in Dublin in which they were the sole providers of public transport. It represents to some extent capital that was invested in tramway lines that have since been removed, but, as I said on a previous occasion, it is frequently contended, and I think rightly contended, that a transport undertaking, and particularly a road transport undertaking, has no real assets at all except goodwill.

Take the position of the Dublin United Transport Company. What is its real asset? It is not the omnibuses it runs. If there were a break-up sale of the company, very few of us would want to buy an omnibus. It would be a rather awkward thing to have around the backyard. Its real asset is its capacity to earn revenue. It is the goodwill. It may have got that position under legislation, I am not denying that, but that is certainly its real asset, not the actual physical and tangible things it uses to operate its services.

If we are going to value the Dublin United Transport Company, surely the right basis is what it can earn. What can it earn? This company is, we know, earning far more revenue than will be required to meet the interest obligation that will arise under the debenture stock we are proposing to create. In fact, there is going to be an addition to the net revenue of the new company by reason of the amalgamation. The Dublin United Transport Company is going to bring into the amalgamation on its present basis more revenue than will be required to meet the interest charges that will result from the amalgamation of the Dublin United Transport Company and the Great Southern Railways Company. In addition, if the exemption from corporation profits tax carries over to the new company also, there will be a further addition to the revenue of the new company which will represent a very substantial amount. I think I am not wrong in saying that the Dublin United Transport Company paid in corporation profits tax £150,000 last year. They would not pay that every year and may not pay that in the current year but that was, in fact, the amount they paid last year and that revenue earning capacity of the company represents a real asset which is worth paying for and which represents a very good bargain from the point of view of this new company.

Similarly, when one comes to consider the position of the Great Southern Railways Company, one must not have regard solely to stock market valuations of the shares. The price at which the shares of the company are quoted on the stock market is no indication at all of what you could buy all the shares of the company at. If the Dáil determined to acquire the shares of that company on a basis fixed by an arbitrator you would have to say to that arbitrator that he must determine the value upon a willing seller-willing buyer basis. That is the basis upon which all arbitration proceedings are held unless specific legal provision is made to the contrary. If the compulsory acquisition of property at the present time leads to arbitration proceedings, under the Land Clauses Act, the arbitrator set up under that Act determines the value of the property upon that basis—what a willing buyer would give to a willing seller. If you try to determine the value of all these shares of the Great Southern Railways Company on a willing buyer-willing seller basis, you will find the amount substantially different from the stock-market quotation at any particular time.

But can we leave out of account the history of that company? That Great Southern Railways Company represents at the present time an amalgamation of railway companies into which £31,000,000 was put originally. That £31,000,000 was reduced to £26,000,000 by the Act of 1924. The company could not earn, and never did earn between 1924 and 1933, enough revenue to remunerate the capital liability of £26,000,000 and in 1933, without consulting anyone, without asking the consent of the shareholders, and against the opposition of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party—or the United Ireland Party, or the Fine Gael Party —whatever Party was in opposition at the time—we cut the nominal value of the shares in a most drastic manner. The debentures were cut by 15 per cent.; the ordinary stocks by 90 per cent. Every £100 ordinary share in the Great Southern Railways Company represents an original investment of £1,000 and it is only upon the basis of that reduced value that dividends, if paid at all, were paid. I mentioned here the possibility of the holder of £100 ordinary stock getting 1 per cent. under the amalgamation scheme. Remember, that is 1 per cent. upon £100, which £100 represents an original investment of £1,000, and I do not think we are entitled to leave these facts out of account in determining whether we are fair to these shareholders in the proposals here.

We decided this time not to reduce the nominal value of the stocks but we are nevertheless enforcing upon these individual stockholders a reduction in their interest. A person who loaned £100 to the Great Southern Railways Company and got a debenture entered into a contract with that company under which contract the company undertook to pay him 4 per cent. per annum. A debenture holder, as was very forcibly pointed out to me in 1933 when I was cutting the nominal value of debentures of the Great Southern Railways Company, is in a different position from an ordinary stockholder. He has rights which are guaranteed to him in law. A debenture holder in any commercial enterprise has this particular right, that if there is a failure to pay his interest he can go in and take over the whole undertaking to which he has loaned his money and either run it himself until his interest obligations are fully discharged, or break it up and sell its assets to get him back his capital. These debenture holders were getting 4 per cent. from the Great Southern Railways Company, and got that 4 per cent. without break up to the present year. We went to these debenture holders and we said to them: "We are proposing to give you greater security than you have. The security which you have now, although there has been no failure up to the present to meet your interest, is not as complete as you would like it to be. We propose, therefore, to give you the final security of a Government guarantee but in return for that we ask you to accept not 4 per cent. but 3 per cent.—a 25 per cent. reduction in your income." The debenture holders agreed.

Similarly, the owners of the 4 per cent. guaranteed stock, whose 4 per cent. interest has been paid up to date, even though it was not always paid every year regularly, have agreed to accept not 4 per cent. but a guaranteed 1½ per cent. in future with a chance of some additional dividend if this common stock earns a dividend in future. That was done by agreement. These various shareholders of the Great Southern Railways Company have agreed to accept a lesser return upon their investment in consideration of the introduction of this amalgamation scheme and the greater security that this amalgamation scheme gives them. We got their agreement to it. When introducing the 1933 Act I was told by the Fine Gael Party that I should not have attempted to interfere with the value of the stocks of the company without the agreement of the shareholders and particularly I was told that I had committed sacrilege in interfering with the nominal value of the debentures without the consent of the debenture holders and, as the House is aware, that action by the Government had repercussions elsewhere which interfered with the capacity of business people in this country to raise money on debentures in the British market. I am told to-day that I am acting equally wrongly in trying on this occasion to get the consent of the debenture holders. I do not think so. I think the procedure adopted on this occasion was justifiable. These shareholders of the Great Southern Railways Company have agreed to the proposals that we put to them. So have the shareholders of the Dublin United Transport Company, and I am prepared to defend these proposals as reasonable in all the circumstances. That creates a situation in which the new company comes into existence with capital liabilities of £13,500,000.

Deputy O'Higgins spoke about pouring out large sums of public money and asked on what the difference between the £13,500,000 and the £20,000,000, the total possible capital liabilities of the company, was to be spent. I do not think Deputy O'Higgins has begun to understand the scheme. We are setting up a new company. Everyone knows that companies, when brought into being, are frequently established with a nominal capital considerably in excess of the amount which it is intended to use in the actual business of the undertaking. That is what we are doing here. This new company will have a nominal capital of £20,000,000. It will have a paid-up capital, on constitution, of £13,500,000, and the £6,500,000 of uncalled capital represents the amount which the company may avail of if necessary and only if necessary, in order to undertake new capital works. It cannot call upon a penny of that £6,500,000 without the consent of the Minister for Finance. The Minister for Finance has to give his assent to the issue of the new debentures and he will only give that assent when it is clear that the expenditure of this additional capital sum on the business of the undertaking will in fact increase the revenue of the undertaking so as to enable the additional interest charges to be met. In fact, it is contemplated that the new capital expenditure which the company will have to undertake after the war will be defrayed largely, if not entirely, out of revenue. But, if it cannot be defrayed entirely out of revenue, then it is desirable that the company should have this uncalled capital which it will be able to avail of in order to enable its development plans to be proceeded with.

That explanation of the scheme of things will make it obvious that Deputy O'Higgins' demand that we should produce a bill of quantities setting out all the railway lines, sleepers, carriages and coaches that we are going to buy with the estimated cost of them, is quite preposterous. That type of procedure was a practicable one in relation to the Shannon Scheme where you had one single job to do and you could ask contractors to tender for the doing of the job and produce the tenders of the contractors for examination. We are not setting out here to do one job. We are setting out to constitute a company which has to carry on transport indefinitely in the future. This surplus capital over the amount immediately required by the company on constitution will be there to be called upon only if they require it and will not in fact be called upon if it can be avoided.

Deputy MacEoin paid a lot more attention to the reactions of the stock exchange on the proposals in the Bill than I did. In so far as I have had time to study the stock market quotations for Great Southern Railways stocks, the defeat of the Bill did not seem to me to influence them at all. I think that was a rather remarkable fact. I remember just prior to the defeat of the Bill in May last a Deputy of the Labour Party announcing with glee that, when the Bill was defeated, the company's stocks would be back to the lowest figures ever recorded for them on the stock exchange and Deputies seemed to me to fail to appreciate the significance of that.

They went down ten points.

On the first day after the general election was declared and rose again afterwards. That seemed to me to demonstrate clearly that the present value of these stocks was determined by the position of the company and not by any proposals in the Bill and that the stocks maintained their value irrespective of the fate of the Bill. Deputy MacEoin appears to think that there is something in the history of the last few weeks which shows that financiers can make or unmake Governments. The only statement I saw published on behalf of the stock exchange was one obviously hostile to the Government and I am quite certain that it was prepared by a partisan adherent of the Deputy's Party. He knows the statement I am referring to. It was so prejudiced that nobody took it seriously. It demonstrated that the financial forces that the Deputy is referring to failed to make or to unmake this Government.

Could we have a look at the Party funds?

Will you produce yours?

I will produce mine.

Your Party know a good deal about that.

Leave it between us. You need not bother about it.

Deputy MacEoin thinks it is for some reason associated with the stock market. This Bill has no relation to the stock market. Deputies are paying far too much attention to the stock market values. We are concerned with the capital liabilities which we are proposing to give the new company and these liabilities are independent of the current prices of the stocks on the market. Deputy Davin asked why the chairman of the company suggested, prior to the vote on the Bill last May, that we should withdraw the Bill. I am not in a position to know precisely what was in his mind. The conclusion I came to was that he could not "take it", if the Deputy understands. There was a whispering campaign of a rather nasty kind proceeding which did not worry me because I am case hardened, but it worried him and it was because he could not "take it" as well as I could that he made that suggestion.

That is a good explanation.

I think it is a true explanation. Deputy Norton appears to think that it is possible for us to guarantee to the present employees of the Great Southern Railways Company and the Dublin United Transport Company that they shall never lose their employment except through illness or misconduct. There is no body of workers in the country with that security. We do not contemplate that we can give to the present employees of these companies that absolute guarantee of employment in all circumstances. We provide in this Bill for compensation on redundancy resulting from the amalgamation. It was suggested that we were in some way lessening the security of employment or worsening the conditions of employment of the existing servants of the company. I deny that we are doing that. We are certainly not interfering with whatever security of employment they now have, or altering their conditions of employment. The Deputy proposes that we should, because of this amalgamation, give them something they never had up to the present, something which it was never contemplated or proposed in the past that they should have, and that is an absolute guarantee of employment no matter what the fate of the company may be. Deputy Norton tells us that this company will not even earn the debenture interest, that it is bound to fail. That was his forecast of the future of the company. But despite the fact that he had that pessimisic outlook concerning the future of the company, he thought that we should impose this extraordinary obligation on the new company.

The idea of effecting the amalgamation of the road transport services with the railway services under one company in 1933 was to ensure that, if there was a shift of employment because of changing the transport methods, the shift of employment would cause the least possible hardship by taking place within the confines of a single organisation. I met groups of railway workers throughout the country during the recent election and, although they spoke about the question of redundancy, none asked for the guarantee Deputy Norton suggested. They did fear the possibility that, in the course of the next ten or 15 years, such changes in transport methods would develop that railway employment would be less secure than it was previously. Their anxiety was to secure an arrangement under which, if that change did develop, if our anticipations in relation to the future of the railways proved to be unduly optimistic and they were eventually to disappear and be replaced by some other form of transport, they would be considered and availed of to meet the employment needs of the other forms of transport which replaced railways in preference to outsiders. That was our idea in enacting the Railways Act of 1933 and we contemplate that this amalgamation will, in fact, facilitate that shift of employment, if it is to come, without hardship to individuals. But we could not attempt to say that, in no circumstances whatever, no matter what traffic will become available to handle, no matter what changes in transport methods will develop, there will be no displacement of any existing employee of the company.

Deputy Davin, for example, mentioned the possibility of the Drumm train replacing steam trains. I do not think the Drumm train will in fact replace steam trains, but you cannot ignore the possibility of some other type of locomotive, other than a steam locomotive, being developed which would and should replace the steam locomotive. Any such change would involve a certain disorganisation of employment, but it would be the aim of the Government and also the aim of the management of the company to try to prevent hardship resulting from that disorganisation of employment by utilising the displaced employees in other forms of transport. We could not, however, guarantee that if there was not the same work to be done by engine drivers, other locomotive engineers, or similar grades of the railway company's employees, they would nevertheless continue to be remunerated on the same basis as if that employment were available for them. The obligation of the Government is to ensure that where the State takes certain action in order to bring about certain consequences, those who suffer by reason of such State action will be compensated. For instance, if I, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, make an Order closing a branch line, then the workers who may become disemployed by reason of that Order are entitled to compensation. If, as a result of the operation of this Bill, two companies are amalgamated and there should be redundancy consequent on that amalgamation, there is an obligation on me either to provide alternative employment or to see that these people are compensated, but we cannot just say that we will guarantee compensation to every person who is now employed in transport services in the country who may at any time be disemployed. I will state my belief now, and that is that we can bring back to the public transport service of this country a large part of the traffic that has been already lost, and if we are able to do that, then we will be able to guarantee employment not only to those who are now employed in the conduct of these services, but also to give increased employment. When the chairman of the company referred to the burden—

Of the eight-hour day?

No. When the chairman referred to the burden of wages in relation to the income of the company at the present time, he was not so much expressing a desire to have a reduction in wages as to bring about increased revenue for the company. What he had in mind was that there should be a better relationship than at present between the revenue of the company and its wages bill, and as an alternative to reducing public transport or reducing the wages bill, we are trying to create under this Bill a public transport system which will give increased services to the community and, consequently, increase employment and the wage bill involved in it, and to do that in a way which will be profitable not merely to the shareholders of the company but to the public of the country as a whole, by providing the community with improved and efficiently organised and equipped transport services.

Deputy Keyes, who frankly admitted that he was pessimistic about the future of the railways, contemplated that after the war there would develop here new and increased competition by private lorries on the road, which would make any scheme for the protection of the railways impracticable. Let me say that we are setting up here, not merely a railway undertaking, but a general transport undertaking. The object of Córas Iompair Éireann is to provide whatever form of transport service will be best suited to the needs of this country. It is being given control of the railways undertaking, and no matter what other forms of transport facilities may be undertaken, there will have to be a railway undertaking. It is our belief that, if properly organised and equipped, railway undertakings can beat road transport for many traffics, and while it is true that the railway company lost traffic in the past, we hold that it need not have done so. That is our belief, and we feel that if the railway company had gone out and put up a fight, it would have retained a large part of the traffic which it lost in the last few years.

Deputy Cogan referred to the intimate, personal type of service which the private transport operators gave to the farmers and the rural community in general. Why did not the public transport company endeavour to do the same thing? It was the proper function of that company to see that whatever type of service was required by the rural community should be provided for them. That is what we want to achieve here: to ensure that the company will go out and make a fight, become the main transport service in this country, and maintain transport services on an economic basis while, at the same time, providing these services cheaply and extensively enough to meet public needs.

Deputy Mulcahy, I think, misunderstood to some extent the provisions of the Bill relating to the rate of interest upon debenture stock. There are two classes of debenture stock: one class, which is described in the Bill as the substituted debenture stock, and the other class the new debenture stock. So far as we are attempting to forecast what the price of money to the Government will be in the future, we are fixing in the Bill that the rate of interest on new debenture stock shall not exceed 3 per cent. We are merely fixing a maximum rate of interest.

I am concerned with the substituted debenture stock.

That represents only a bargain made with the existing debenture holders, who have a right to 4 per cent., but who have agreed to 3 per cent., in consideration of the Government guarantee and the consequent position of security, but that again is not an attempt to determine the rate of interest to be paid in the future. The rate of interest is not determined by the Government but by the persons who, having money, are willing to lend it, and one can more or less calculate from the quotations of Government stocks at any time what is the prevailing rate of interest or the prevailing price at which the Government can get money. At the present time, the 3¼ per cent. National Security Loan is quoted at 105¾. In other words, people have decided for themselves that they are entitled to get 3 per cent. for their money. It may be that circumstances may change, but 3 per cent. is, roughly, the current price.

My point is that the Government should not accept that, and that it could get the money cheaper and thus pay off these debenture stock holders.

I am quite certain that at the present time the Government could not raise the money, amounting to £9,875,556, to pay off those debenture holders, and meet the cost of the cost of flotation and management, which would have to be recovered in some form for the Exchequer at 3 per cent. I pointed out previously that we are proposing to finance this scheme at a lower rate of interest than any other scheme financed by the Government. The Shannon scheme, for instance, was financed at 5 per cent.

In what year?

It is still paying 5 per cent. The Housing schemes were financed at 6 per cent., and it may be that the Government made some profit on that, but the Government cannot lend out money at the same rate as that at which it borrows it, and in this scheme we are providing capital at a lower rate of interest than a private company could get it or than the Government could get it for the purpose of utilising it in a transport organisation of this kind. However, we are not determining what price the Government will have to pay in the future. We are merely determining that they will not pay more than 3 per cent., but it is possible that the company may have to issue 3 per cent. stock at a discount in order to raise the money.

I do not think there are any other matters for me to refer to now. A number of matters connected with redundancy and pension schemes were raised, which can be dealt with in Committee, because I do not think it would be desirable to discuss them on this stage of the Bill.

The Minister in his closing speech on the previous Second Reading debate gave an assurance that the trade union representatives of existing workers would not be interfered with. Information has been given to the Minister, and if necessary evidence can be produced, to prove that has happened, even since he gave the assurance. Will he have his views on that matter conveyed to the present chairman of the company?

Any assurance I gave related to a company not yet established—Córas Iompair Éireann. Whatever legal obligations were imposed on the existing company by the Acts of 1924 and 1926 can be enforced in the courts if necessary. The assurance I gave was that the company to be established, but which will not come into existence until the 1st January, 1945, will carry over from the existing companies that will be amalgamated, the same obligations as these companies have under existing statutes.

Does he approve of a man who is his nominee, the chairman of the company, in giving permission to a trade union official to go into the workshop of the company in an effort to induce workers of the company while at their work to change their trade union allegiance?

Do you object to Irishmen being asked to become members of an Irish trade union?

I do not know that it happened and I am inclined to doubt that it ever happened.

Will you inquire into it?

I have no function in the matter.

Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 69; Níl, 38.

  • Aiken, Frank
  • Allen, Denis
  • Bartley, Gerald
  • Beegan, Patrick
  • Blaney, Neal
  • Boland, Gerald
  • Boland, Patrick
  • Bourke, Dan
  • Brady, Brian
  • Brady, Seán
  • Breathnach, Cormac
  • Breen, Daniel
  • Brennan, Martin
  • Brennan, Thomas
  • Breslin, Cormac
  • Briscoe, Robert
  • Buckley, Seán
  • Burke, Patrick (Co. Dublin)
  • Butler, Bernard
  • Carter, Thomas
  • Childers, Erskine H.
  • Colley, Harry
  • MacEntee, Seán
  • Maguire, Ben
  • Morrissey, Michael
  • Moylan, Seán
  • O Briain, Donnchadh
  • O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
  • O'Connor, John S.
  • O'Grady, Seán
  • O'Leary, John
  • O'Loghlen, Peter J.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew
  • O'Rourke, Daniel
  • Pattison, James P.
  • Daly, Francis J.
  • De Valera, Eamon
  • Everett, James
  • Flynn, Stephen
  • Fogarty, Andrew
  • Fogarty, Patrick J.
  • Friel, John
  • Furlong, Walter
  • Gorry, Patrick J.
  • Harris, Thomas
  • Hilliard, Michael
  • Humphreys, Francis
  • Kennedy, Michael J.
  • Killilea, Mark
  • Kilroy, James
  • Kissane, Eamon
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick J.
  • Loughman, Frank
  • Lydon, Michael F.
  • McCann, John
  • McCarthy, Seán
  • Rice, Bridget M.
  • Ruttledge, Patrick J.
  • Ryan, James
  • Ryan, Mary B.
  • Ryan, Robert
  • Sheridan, Michael
  • Skinner, Leo B.
  • Smith, Patrick
  • Traynor, Oscar
  • Walsh, Laurence
  • Walsh, Richard
  • Ward, Conn

Níl

  • Anthony, Richard S.
  • Beirne, John
  • Bennett, George C.
  • Byrne, Alfred
  • Cogan, Patrick
  • Coogan, Eamonn
  • Corish, Richard
  • Cosgrave, Liam
  • Costello, John A.
  • Davin, William
  • Dockrell, Henry M.
  • Dockrell, Maurice E.
  • Doyle, Peadar S.
  • Fagan, Charles
  • Flanagan, Oliver J.
  • Giles, Patrick
  • Halliden, Patrick J.
  • Heskin, Denis
  • Hughes, James
  • Keating, John
  • Keyes, Michael
  • Lynch, Finian
  • McAuliffe, Patrick
  • MacEoin, Seán
  • McFadden, Michael Og
  • McMenamin, Daniel
  • Mulcahy, Richard
  • Norton, William
  • O'Donnell, William F.
  • O'Driscoll, Patrick F.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas F.
  • O'Reilly, Patrick
  • O'Sullivan, Martin
  • O'Reilly, Thomas
  • Reynolds, Mary
  • Roddy, Martin
  • Rogers, Patrick J.
  • Sheldon, William A. W.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Kissane and Kennedy; Níl: Deputies P.S. Doyle and Keyes.
Question declared carried.

When is it proposed to take the Committee Stage?

September 5th.

Without prejudice.

Very well; without prejudice.

Would the Minister indicate whether it is his intention to circulate his amendments early?

I have not promised to circulate any amendments.

As the Bill is pretty technical and the Minister indicated that there would be amendments to it, it might be advantageous if he circulated them early.

In fact, I will have some amendments other than those which were referred to here. Any such amendments I will endeavour to have circulated early, but I am not undertaking that any amendments I circulate early will be all I have to propose, and I certainly am not bound by other persons' interpretations of the speech I made in May last.

The Minister realises that his amendments will be very technical. Would he arrange to circulate his amendments, or as many of them as possible, early, so that the House will have the advantage of seeing these technical amendments?

I should not like to give that undertaking. I do not want to give the Deputy any alibi for not producing all the amendments he wants to make.

You will get them in any event—have no doubt about that.

Committee Stage ordered for September 5th.
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